This is by far the largest sample of free-floating planets in a single association, and almost doubles the number of free-floating planets known to date over the entire sky. We identified up to 170 free-floating planets 2 members of the Upper Scorpius young stellar association (see Fig. Middle: myself with the OSIRIS spectrograph at the 10m telescope GTC. Left: picture of myself in the Chilean sky, next to the 4m Blanco telescope. However, after some months of hard work, we managed to build the largest catalogue of proper motions (i.e., motions across the plane of the sky) and multi-wavelength photometry in this huge area (170 degrees squared).
Clearly, this huge amount of data led to some difficult times in the beginning and we had to come up with new pathways and ideas, based on modern statistics and big data techniques. This was one of the most exciting parts of my PhD since I got the opportunity to visit some of the greatest telescopes on Earth (see Fig.1)! We compiled over 80 000 wide-field images adding up to around 100 TB.
#Glimpses population freefloating planets plus#
We started by collecting all the images available in this region plus our observations. Its richness (in the number of sources) and proximity make this region an excellent area for hunting planets. We decided to start searching for free-floating planets in the Upper Scorpius young stellar association because it is one of the closest star-forming regions to the Sun. However, their nature and origin remain unknown: do they form like stars through the gravitational collapse of small clouds of gas? Or do they form like planets around stars and are then dynamically ejected or stripped off? While it is known that both mechanisms can produce free-floating planets, their respective contributions are still an open question due to the lack of a large homogeneous sample. Then, what do planets have to do in understanding the star formation process? Everything! Free-floating planets 1 are an additional outcome of the star formation process and they are especially interesting because their lightness makes them more sensitive to the initial conditions and to dynamical interactions. I started my PhD back in 2017 with the ultimate goal of understanding how stars form.
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