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The trouble is, from a single flash you can't tell if it's a small object nearby or a massive one far away: just like in the dark, a coin held to your eye and the Moon in the sky appear as the same circle.
Astronomers solved the puzzle by widening their eyes: one telescope watched from Earth, another from space. The difference in viewing angle (parallax) gave the distance, and with it, the exact mass. The object turned out to be a lightweight gas giant at 0.22 Jupiter masses, but the main surprise: it was born in a protoplanetary disk, like an ordinary planet. This isn't a failed clump of gas, but a world hurled out of its native cradle by a gravitational slingshot. And a staggering fact: there may be more such wanderers in the Galaxy than stars.