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Scientists Scan Mysterious Planet as It Drifts Through Space
A team of researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to uncover new details about SIMP 0136, a free-floating planet in the Milky Way that does not orbit a star.
It has a mass about 13 times that of Jupiter, and is thought to have the structure and chemical composition of a giant gas planet, though its true characteristics have not yet been determined. Although difficult to observe using visible light, it shines brightly in infrared—in fact, SIMP 0136 is the brightest free-floating planetary-mass object in the northern sky. Or for another way to picture this, try imagining the surface of the Earth, says Philip Muirhead of Boston University, a coauthor of a new paper outlining these findings about SIMP 0136.
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