Artist’s animation of a rogue planet in Rho Ophiuchi

22 December, 2021 / Read time: 1 minute

This artist’s animation shows what a rogue planet wandering around Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex could look like. A rogue planet is a planet that does not orbit a star but instead roams freely on its own.

Recently, a team of astronomers, using telescope data from our partners the European Southern Observatory (ESO), discovered at least 70 new rogue planets in a region of the sky occupied by Upper Scorpius and Ophiucus.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard)