However, a free-floating (or “rogue”) planet offers none of that. It drifts through a galaxy without an obvious host star, ...

Planets usually stay close to their host stars, tracing steady paths shaped by gravity. Yet some planets break free and drift ...

Astronomers have, for the first time, pinned down both the mass and distance of a planet that drifts through the galaxy ...

The team has estimated that the planet is about 22 percent the mass of Jupiter, so roughly a Saturn-sized world. It is ...

A lucky alignment of space- and ground-based telescopes has enabled researchers to nail down the mass of a rogue planet for the first time. Unlike worlds in our Solar System, rogue planets do not ...

Simultaneous ground- and space-based observations of a newly discovered free-floating planet have enabled direct measurement of its mass and distance from Earth, according to a new study. The findings ...

Rogue planets — worlds that drift through space alone without a star — largely remain a mystery to scientists. Now, ...

Gravitational microlensing is a transient but powerful phenomenon that occurs when a foreground mass – such as a star or a planetary system – temporarily magnifies the light from a more distant ...

The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to determine the mass of white dwarf star LAWD 37. It is "56 percent the mass of our Sun," according to NASA/ESA. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. McGill (Univ. of ...

While most planets that we are familiar with stick relatively close to their host star in a predictable orbit, some planets ...