how did THIS happen?

It is over 8X as large as Jupiter.  There has been a lot of talk about exoplanets lately and including a potential newly discovered planet at the edge of our solar system.  And now you can add one more to the archive of mysterious planetary discoveries in the last year.  Here is a bit more about it:

A massive rogue planet has been discovered in the Beta Pictoris moving group. The planet, called PSO J318.5338-22.8603 (Sorry, I didn’t name it), is over eight times as massive as Jupiter. Because it’s one of the few directly-imaged exoplanets we know of, and is accessible for study by spectroscopy, this massive planet will be extremely important when piecing together the details of planetary formation and evolution.

What do you think this will tell us about planetary development in the future?

Let’s find out more and check out a video about Beta Pictoris on page 2

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