The discovery of this unusual planet was made by a telescope that is especially good at detecting dim items at night. At the time, the Pan-STARRS 1 in Hawaii was searching for brown dwarfs or, failed stars. Eugene Magnier of the University of Hawaii did admit that the planet might be a brown dwarf instead of a planet. He says, “We still don't have a good idea about where to draw the line between a planet and brown dwarf."
In terms of detection, both brown dwarfs and this planet emit energy in infrared wavelengths, which show up as the color red. However, i09 notes that the report shows that the planet, referred to as PSO J318.5-22, showed up far redder than any brown dwarf on record.
Going forward, the goal is to see if there are any companion planets around this one, as most things in space don’t form all on their own. But this discovery does allow scientists to study young gas planets more closely, as the blinding light of a star is not in the equation.
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Topic: Lonely planet found floating in galaxy without a star (Read 434 times)