Johanna M. Vos

In the vast darkness of interstellar space, the rogue planet WISE 0855 flickers with a barely perceptible heat glow, like a cooling ember. Its temperature is only a few dozen degrees above freezing — if life existed there, it would see a sunless sky, in an eternal icy haze.

Brown dwarfs are heavier than planets but lighter than stars. Their atmospheres resemble a bubbling pot: clouds of scorching sand and iron droplets rise and fall.

Far beyond the Solar System, a world called VHS 1256B wanders — a giant planet without a star. For a long time, astronomers couldn’t figure out why its brightness jumped by nearly 40% in just a few days. The answer came with the James Webb telescope: it turns out, colossal storms of silicate dust engulf the entire planet.

2,41 hours. That's exactly how long a day lasts on SIMP 0136 — a lonely planet-like object 6,1 parsecs away. That's twice as far as Proxima Centauri. Its mass ranges from 12,7 to 17,8 Jupiter masses, placing it on the boundary between planet and star.