PSO J318.5-22
PSO J318.5−22 is a rogue planet or free floating planet, an extrasolar object of planetary mass that does not orbit a parent star. It is about 80 light-years away, and belongs to the Beta Pictoris moving group. It was discovered in 2013 in pictures taken by the Pan-STARRS PS1 wide-field telescope. PSO J318.5-22's age is supposed to be 12 million years, same age as the Beta Pictoris group. Based on its computed temperature and age, it was classified under the brown dwarf spectral type L7.
Image : PSO J318.5-22 (A Free Floating Planet)
Image Credit : N. Metcalfe & Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium
The leader of the team, Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, stated: "We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like it. It has all the qualities of planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone." Current theories about this kind of objects include the possibility that gravitational fluctuations may have kicked them out of their planetary systems after they formed through planetary accretion, or they may have been formed by some other things. Approximately temperatures inside its clouds exceed 1,100 K (800 °C). The clouds, made of hot dust and shed iron, show how widespread clouds are in planets and planet-like objects. By 2020, modeling showed the brightness variability cannot be unambiguously imputed to clouds.
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