Mysterious wandering planet discovered 'devouring' 6 billion tons of gas and dust per second

A primitive planet drifting through space without a star to call home has been caught in a terrible, never-before-seen feeding frenzy. It is Father 1107-7626 .

 

What is special about Father 1107-7626?

Not only is this the highest growth rate ever recorded for a planet-mass object, but Cha 1107-7626 also exhibits behavior previously seen only in growing stars and brown dwarfs. However, its mass is only 5 to 10 times that of Jupiter—well below the 80 Jupiter mass limit for stars, and the 13 Jupiter mass limit for brown dwarfs.

Astronomers measured a peak accretion rate of about 10⁻⁷ Jupiter masses per year—about 6 billion tons per second—and the blast lasted at least two months.

"This is the strongest accretion event ever recorded for a planetary mass object ," said astronomer Víctor Almendros-Abad of Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics.

" People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery, we see that planetary-mass objects floating freely in space can bring many interesting surprises ."

 

Wandering exoplanets – formally known as free-floating planetary mass objects, or FFPMOs – are a mystery that has only recently come to light as advanced technology has revealed more about them than humans knew.

As their name suggests, they are planet-mass objects less than 13 times Jupiter's mass – but unlike most of the 6,000-plus planets we know of, they don't have a star to call their home.

This has raised interesting speculation about how these rogue planets form : Do they develop around a star and get pushed out into space by its gravitational pull? Or do they just form on their own, like a star, but without enough surrounding material to grow to star size?

New observations of Cha 1107-7626, located 620 light-years away in the Chamaeleon star-forming cluster, clearly show a second origin for some of these strange objects.

Cha 1107-7626 was discovered in 2008, attracting the attention of astronomers because it exhibits behavior consistent with accretion—growth from the absorption of a swirling disk surrounding an object.

Research Process Cha 1107-7626

Almendros-Abad began an observing campaign for the object in the first half of 2025, periodically taking images of its behavior to study this accretion. They switched on the XSHOOTER instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at various times in April, May, and June. Follow-ups in July and August tracked the event across wavelengths from the optical to the mid-infrared.

 

Everything looked normal until late June, when Cha 1107-7626 suddenly brightened. The team of astronomers was surprised to find that this increase in light was nothing like an EXor burst – a surge in brightness seen in a young star, often associated with accelerated accretion. Crucially, its spectrum possessed hydrogen features, the hallmark of the magnetic funnel accretion seen in EXor bursts of stars.

A careful analysis followed, along with an examination of archival data. The researcher found that Cha 1107-7626's accretion rate had not only increased six to eight times above normal, but had also occurred at least once before, in 2016, suggesting that these outbursts could be recurring. That process was still ongoing when observations ended in August.

Observations with the VLT and JWST have shown other ways in which Cha 1107-7626 behaves like a star. It appears to be surrounded by a vast disk of silicate and hydrocarbon material, similar to those seen around young stars.

During the flare, the object became three to six times brighter in visible light, remained nearly unchanged in the near infrared, and showed a slight increase in brightness in the mid-infrared as the inner disk warmed. JWST also detected some water vapor and a small change in the carbon signal, suggesting that the explosion stirred up the disk's chemical composition, while the dust signature remained the same.

This behavior suggests that Cha 1107-7626 formed alone in a cloud within the Chamaeleon complex, starting from a 'knot' of dense material that collapsed under the influence of gravity, in a similar way to how stars form. It is still possible that the planet formed around a star, but this is difficult to reconcile.

The accretion spectrum and disc changes are more consistent with a direct, stellar-collapse origin; and while early ejection from a stellar system is not impossible, it would have to be extremely gentle to maintain such a stable and chemically active disc.

This is a fantastic result that significantly advances our understanding, not just of FFPMOS, but also of the different ways the universe could have created the matter that filled it.

The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.