[LINK] "Lonely But Not Alone: A Planet Orbits its Star at 1 Trillion Kilometres"

[rfmcdonald]

Universe Today's Evan Gough notes the discovery of a planet separated from its star but almost a light-month.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RSA) has announced the discovery of a planet that orbits its star at a distance of 1 trillion kilometres. This is easily the furthest distance between a star and a planet ever found. For comparison, that’s 7,000 times further than the Earth is from the Sun. At that distance, a single orbit takes about 900,000 years, meaning that the planet has orbited its star less than 50 times.

The planet itself was discovered in an infrared sky survey by US researchers, and following astronomical protocol it was given the charming name 2MASS J2126.

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A planet drifting through space by itself may not be a rare thing. 2MASS J2126 joined a list of other starless planets discovered in the last few years. The existence of 2MASS J2126 out by itself in space didn’t merit much attention. Only when a relationship was established between 2MASS J2126, and the star TYC 9486-927-1, did things get interesting.

Dr. Niall Deacon, of the University of Hertfordshire, is the lead author of the study. He has spent the last few years looking for young stars that have companions in wide orbits. Deacon and his team pored over lists of brown dwarfs, young stars, and free-floating planets, looking for relationships between them. Eventually they found that the planet 2MASS J2126 and the star TYC 9486-927-1 are both about 104 light years from our Sun, and are moving through space together. “This is the widest planet system found so far and both the members of it have been known for eight years, but nobody had made the link between the objects before,” said Dr. Deacon.