{"id":228238,"date":"2026-01-02T22:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T04:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/astronomers-measure-both-mass-and-distance-of-a-rogue-planet-for-the-first-time"},"modified":"2026-01-02T22:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T04:12:26","slug":"astronomers-measure-both-mass-and-distance-of-a-rogue-planet-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/astronomers-measure-both-mass-and-distance-of-a-rogue-planet-for-the-first-time","title":{"rendered":"Astronomers measure both mass and distance of a rogue planet for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/astronomers-measure-both-mass-and-distance-of-a-rogue-planet-for-the-first-time.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While most planets that we are familiar with stick relatively close to their host star in a predictable orbit, some planets seem to have been knocked out of their orbits, floating through space free of any particular gravitational attachments. Astronomers refer to these lonely planets as \u201cfree-floating\u201d or \u201crogue\u201d planets.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, a new rogue planet was identified, and, unlike previously identified rogue planets, astronomers were able to calculate both its mass and distance from Earth. A new study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aed5209\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Science<\/i>, describes how a few lucky observations from both ground-based and space-based telescopes made these calculations possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While most planets that we are familiar with stick relatively close to their host star in a predictable orbit, some planets seem to have been knocked out of their orbits, floating through space free of any particular gravitational attachments. Astronomers refer to these lonely planets as \u201cfree-floating\u201d or \u201crogue\u201d planets. Recently, a new rogue planet [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}