This illustration shows a Jupiter-like planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star. CLEoPATRA mission scientists hope to improve the mass estimates of such planets discovered through microlensing. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
Exoplanet hunters have found thousands of planets, most orbiting close to their host stars, but relatively few alien worlds have been detected that float freely through the galaxy as so-called rogue planets, not bound to any star. Many astronomers believe that these planets are more common than we know, but that our planet-finding techniques haven’t been …
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