Zooming into a rogue planet

This animation lets us plunge into a region of the sky occupied by Upper Scorpius and Ophiucus, where the largest group of rogue planets — at least 70, highlighted in the circles — has recently been discovered. Here we zoom in on one of them.

Rogue planets do not orbit a star but roam freely on their own. Lurking far away from any star illuminating it, the rogue planet does not shine by reflected light; it instead emits a faint glow that can only be detected in infrared light. At around 40 seconds in the video we see this faint glow in a real image of a rogue planet obtained using data from the VST and VISTA telescopes. At the end of the video we see an artist’s impression of what this planet could look like in visible light.