Found, Planet 'Loneliness' Without Accompanied Stars

lonely planet (logilmu.blogspot.com)

Team of astronomers have discovered a new planet floating alone in space without orbiting the star. As a result the planet is dubbed as the lonely planet.

Reported by Space, October 13, 2013, finding a new planet was first detected by the telescope Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) is placed in Maui Haleakala Volcano, Hawaii. The position of the planet about 12 light years from Earth.

"Solitary planet was named PSO J318.5-22 and an estimated age of 12 million years. Resized planet PSO J318.5-22 is quite large, six times the size of the planet Jupiter," said Michael Liu, a researcher from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, USA.

Liu added that the team had never before astronomers find new young planet floating in space alone. Should the characteristics of young planets are around the stars is to be found.

"Why is a solitary planet? Was that we were together a team of astronomers find out more," said Liu.

Findings planet PSO J318.5-22 has opened new avenues for astronomers to understand the nature of the planets that exist outside our Solar System. However, only a few new planets that have been studied.

"Planet PSO J318.5-22 is one of hundreds of exoplanets-planets outside the solar system. Planets that needs to be studied further because it was not found in the surrounding star," said Niall Deacon, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany.

In the last 10 years, a team of astronomers have discovered more than 800 exoplanets. However, many astronomers are still predicting that billions of exoplanets in the universe.

"Finding exoplanets similar to finding a needle in a haystack. We hope to use the PS1 telescope can be found again dozens or hundreds of other exoplanets," said Deacon.