Astronomers Successfully Weigh a Starless ‘Rogue Planet’ Drifting Through the Milky Way

Astronomers have precisely measured the mass of a rogue planet wandering through the Milky Way using a rare gravitational microlensing event. By combining observations from ground-based telescopes across three continents with data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, researchers determined the planet’s distance and found it to be about the mass of Saturn. The discovery pro…Astronomers have precisely measured the mass of a rogue planet wandering through the Milky Way using a rare gravitational microlensing event. By combining observations from ground-based telescopes across three continents with data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, researchers determined the planet’s distance and found it to be about the mass of Saturn. The discovery pro…