To identify associations, the team first analyzed movement patterns of the sources, known as proper motions.
Thereby they were able to measure the tiny motions, colors, and luminosities of tens of millions of sources. The team combined a vast amount of images available in public astronomical archives with new deep wide-field observations obtained with the best infrared and optical telescopes in the world. An additional difficulty is to differentiate planets from the overwhelming multitude of field stars and background galaxies." Stars are relatively bright and easy to spot, whereas planets are several thousand times fainter and can only be detected with large aperture telescopes and sensitive detectors. "One needs eyes sensitive enough to detect the ’needles’. "Identifying FFPs within a star cluster is a major challenge, like finding a needle in the haystack", explains Miret Roig. Star associations are open star clusters in which stars are no longer gravitationally bound to each other. To answer this question, Núria Miret Roig and her collaborators targeted the Upper Scorpius young stellar association to search for these elusive planets. Until now it was hard to investigate which formation mechanism is more likely, as a large homogenous sample of FFPs was missing. FFPs might originate in two ways: they either form on their own, like stars, through the gravitational collapse of small clouds of gas, or they form like planets around stars and then get stripped off from their stellar systems. The nature of free-floating planets (FFPs) is still mysterious. Núria Miret Roig of the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna was involved in this exceptional discovery. The large number of planets now detected provides information about the formation process of stars and planets and important information for future research. These celestial bodies do not revolve around a star and are very hard to find due to their very low brightness. With observations of one of the closest star-forming regions to the sun a team of international astronomers discovered the largest population of free-floating planets. Cuillandre, COSMIC-DANCe / CFHT / Gaia DPAC) Artist conception of a Jupiter-like free-floating planet in a star forming region.
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