Astronomers have just confirmed one of the strangest kinds of worlds imaginable, a planet drifting through the galaxy with no star of its own roughly 10,000 light-years from Earth. Instead of circling ...

Astronomers, including a NASA-funded team member, have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone ...

Rogue planets — worlds that drift through space alone without a star — largely remain a mystery to scientists. Now, astronomers have for the first time confirmed the existence of one of these starless ...

The formation of planets is a fascinating process. They usually originate in a disc of dust and gas surrounding stars. When particles come together, they form a clump, and through a process called ...

IMAGE: An artist’s impression of a free-floating planet. Using observations and archival data from several of NSF’s NOIRLab’s observatories, together with observations from telescopes around the world ...

Astronomers have observed a planet that in some ways behaves more like a star — including a massive growth spurt unlike anything witnessed before in a free-floating planet. The rogue planet, which ...