Who knew that planets could be considered "rogue?" New research recently published says that 70 or more rogue planets are wandering aimlessly through space without a host star to orbit.
Núria Miret-Roig, the study's first author, released a press release talking about the discovery and how the number surprised them.
"We did not know how many to expect and are excited to have found so many," Miret-Roig said in the release.
Astronomers have identified rogue planets in the past, but their thoughts that it was a rare phenomenon have now been changed, finding numerous planets that fit the description.
The research on the planets was published in the Nature Astronomy journal, and scientists wrote that they believe the 70 or more they have discovered is the largest group ever spotted roaming the Milky Way.
Astronomers are now saying that this discovery could be crucial to understanding the origins of the "mysterious galactic nomads."
Observers find most exoplanets thanks to the host stars that they orbit, making rogue planets even more challenging to find.
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However, decades of research allowed the scientists to see infrared energy emitted between 70 and 170 of the gas giants, which are still young enough to emit a detectable heat glow.
"We measured the tiny motions, the colors and luminosities of tens of millions of sources in a large area of the sky," Miret-Roig said in the release. "These measurements allowed us to securely identify the faintest objects in this region, the rogue planets."
Several telescopes were used on both Earth and in space to find the planets, including the European Space Agency's Very Large Telescope and Gaia satellite.
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The planets discovered have a mass comparable to Jupiter's and are located within the Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations.
The findings indicated the possibility of a treasure trove of cosmic wanderers not yet found, according to the project's leader, Hervé Bouy, CBS News reported.
"We used tens of thousands of wide-field images from ESO facilities, corresponding to hundreds of hours of observations, and literally tens of terabytes of data," Bouy said.
When it comes to how many of these roaming planets there could be, Buoy says "several billions" are likely without a host star in the Milky Way.
