This artist’s impression 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. It 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. 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.

With its mass increasing at a staggering six billion tonnes a second, astronomers have found a rogue planet growing at record rate.

The astronomers have identified an enormous ‘growth spurt’ in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead.

The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second.

This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet of any kind, providing valuable insights into how they form and grow.

Lead author of the new study, Víctor Almendros-Abad, an astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Palermo, National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Italy, said: “People may think of planets as quiet and stable worlds, but with this discovery we see that planetary-mass objects freely floating in space can be exciting places.”

This infrared image, taken with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) shows the position in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626. The planet is a dot located exactly at the centre of the frame. Credit: ESO/ Meingast et al.

Chamaeleon

The newly studied object, which has a mass five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, is located about 620 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon.

Officially named Cha 1107-7626, this rogue planet is still forming and is fed by a surrounding disc of gas and dust. This material constantly falls onto the free-floating planet, a process known as accretion.

However, the team led by Almendros-Abad has now found that the rate at which the young planet is accreting is not steady.

By August 2025, the planet was accreting about eight times faster than just a few months before, at a rate of six billion tonnes per second!

Almendros-Abad said: “This is the strongest accretion episode ever recorded for a planetary-mass object.”

This visible-light image, part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the position in the sky of the rogue planet Cha 1107-7626. The planet (not visible here) is located exactly at the centre of the frame. Credit: ESO/ Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Origins

The discovery was made with the X-shooter spectrograph on ESO’s VLT, located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. The team also used data from the James Webb Space Telescope, operated by the US, European and Canadian space agencies, and archival data from the SINFONI spectrograph on ESO’s VLT.

Co-author Aleks Scholz, an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, UK, said: “The origin of rogue planets remains an open question: are they the lowest-mass objects formed like stars, or giant planets ejected from their birth systems?”

The findings indicate that at least some rogue planets may share a similar formation path to stars since similar bursts of accretion have been spotted in young stars before.

Co-author Belinda Damian, also an astronomer at the University of St Andrews, added: “This discovery blurs the line between stars and planets and gives us a sneak peek into the earliest formation periods of rogue planets.”

By comparing the light emitted before and during the burst, astronomers gathered clues about the nature of the accretion process.

Remarkably, magnetic activity appears to have played a role in driving the dramatic infall of mass, something that has only been observed in stars before.

This suggests that even low-mass objects can possess strong magnetic fields capable of powering such accretion events.

Phenomenon

The team also found that the chemistry of the disc around the planet changed during the accretion episode, with water vapour being detected during it but not before.

This phenomenon had been spotted in stars but never in a planet of any kind.

Free-floating planets are difficult to detect, as they are very faint, but ESO’s upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), operating under the world’s darkest skies for astronomy, could change that.

Its powerful instruments and giant main mirror will enable astronomers to uncover and study more of these lonely planets, helping them to better understand how star-like they are.

Co-author and ESO astronomer Amelia Bayo concluded: “The idea that a planetary object can behave like a star is awe-inspiring and invites us to wonder what worlds beyond our own could be like during their nascent stages.”

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.