Using the James Webb Space Telescope, stars were discovered in the Orion Nebula whose mass is slightly less than that of Jupiter and which float freely in space without being bound to a star.
Even more surprising is that at least 84 of these 540 objects appear to sail in pairs, according to work by Professor Mark McCaughrean (New Window) and his colleagues at the European Space Agency (ESA), which will soon be published in a scientific journal, but which is yet to be published have not been peer reviewed.
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Five JuMBOs are visible in this image of the nebula taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Photo: NASA/ESA/ASC/Mark McCaughrean/Sam Pearson
The Orion Nebula, listed in the Celestial Catalog as Messier 42, is located about 1,350 light-years from Earth.
This nebula was discovered in 1610 by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. It is the closest star-forming site to Earth, explains astrophysicist Olivier Hernandez, director of the Montreal Planetarium, who was not involved in the study.
There have been more or less detailed descriptions of the Orion Nebula since the 17th century, but only in the last few decades have astronomers discovered objects there in abundance and in unprecedented detail.
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The Orion Nebula as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Photo: NASA
The Hubble and Spitzer telescopes had already discovered many forming stars or protoplanetary disks there, but the latest, most precise images yet from the James Webb Telescope offer an even more impressive sight. They revealed very specific wandering stars, but also thousands of unknown forming stars, whose masses vary from 0.1 times to 40 times the mass of the Sun.
A puzzle for two
The images of the unknown objects were captured using the various filters of the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument, which operates in the near infrared and made it possible to precisely see regions of space that are normally obscured by interstellar dust in the visible light.
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This image mosaic shows the Trapezoid star cluster and the interior of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRcam instrument.
Photo: NASA/ESA/ASC/Chris Evans/Mark McCaughrean/Sandor Kruk/Sam Pearson
Specifically, the discovery of unknown stars was carried out using a mosaic consisting of 712 images collected during a week-long observation of the Trapezium star cluster in the center of the nebula.
What scientists observed was surprising. They discovered many planetary-mass objects that do not meet the definition of a planet, which is an object orbiting a star. They are, in a sense, wandering planets. And about 9% of these objects form pairs.
We do not yet understand the physical processes that enable their creation. We don’t have an answer. We need to check our theoretical models […] “I’m trying to understand what’s happening,” reveals the astrophysicist.
These objects were named JuMBOs (Jupiter Mass Binary Objects) by the ESA team. If their nature remains to be clarified, they could be aborted stars (especially brown dwarfs) originating from regions of the nebula where the density of matter is insufficient for the birth of full-fledged stars.
They could also have formed in the orbit of stars and then been thrown into interstellar space after catastrophic events. The ejection hypothesis is currently favored, says Professor Mark McCaughrean, ESA’s chief scientific advisor, in a press release.
The question now is how two objects can be thrown out of a star’s orbit at the same time.
Astrophysicists believe that their formation is relatively recent in astronomical terms: around a million years ago.
These objects would generally be very hot, the temperature on their surface could reach 1000°C, and their atmosphere would contain steam and methane.
But without a host star, these worlds could also quickly cool as they move. Therefore, they can sometimes have habitable temperatures because they are gaseous, but their surfaces cannot hold liquid water even during their short temperate period, meaning they will never be habitable.
Evidence of their existence
It was no coincidence that the ESA astrophysicists were interested in this region of the sky. Previous data collected by terrestrial telescopes and Hubble suggested the existence of nebulous objects in Orion.
We looked for these very small things and found them!
This is not the first time wandering planets have been discovered. In 2022, an international team of astrophysicists announced the discovery of at least 70 planets of this type in a sector of our galaxy called the Rho Ophiuchi cloud. However, all of these planets could be born in different ways.
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Artist’s impression of a wandering planet
Photo: NASA