Rogue planet devours gas at record rate
Astronomers report that Cha 1107-7626, a free‑floating 'rogue' planetary‑mass object about 620 light years away in Chamaeleon, underwent an extreme accretion episode—consuming roughly six billion tons of gas and dust per second—based on observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The peer‑reviewed findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and led by Víctor Almendros‑Abad and colleagues including Johns Hopkins’ Ray Jayawardhana, show magnetic activity and transient water vapor in the disc, blurring the formation boundary between planets and stars.
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Space
🔍 Key Facts
- Accretion rate measured at about six billion tons of gas and dust per second—an eightfold increase over measurements months earlier.
- Object Cha 1107-7626 is estimated at 5–10 times Jupiter’s mass and ~1–2 million years old, located ~620 light years away in the constellation Chamaeleon.
- Observations came from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; results published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters with named lead/co‑authors and quoted institutional statements.