This artist’s animation shows Cha 1107-7626. Located about 620 light-years away, this rogue planet is about 5-10 times more massive than Jupiter and doesn’t orbit a star. The planet is eating up material from a disc around it and, using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have discovered that it is now doing so at a rate of six billion tonnes per second –– the fastest ever found for any kind of planet. The team suspects that strong magnetic fields could be funnelling material towards the planet, something only seen in stars before.
When the infalling material reaches the planet it heats up its surface, creating a bright hot spot. The X-shooter spectrograph on ESO’s VLT detected a marked brightening in mid-2025, and found a clear fingerprint that this was caused by infalling gas. The observations show that the planet is now accreting matter about 8 times faster than a few months before.
Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser | eso.org
