Rogue Planet Infrared Glow Detector

Free-floating "rogue" planets have been ejected from their birth systems and drift through interstellar space with no host star to orbit — which means the two workhorse exoplanet-finding techniques, transits and radial velocity, simply don't apply. This simulator models the other real detection channel for young rogue planets: their own residual heat. As a gas giant slowly contracts under its own gravity it radiates infrared light, and that glow fades measurably as the planet ages. Adjust the planet's mass, its age since formation, and its distance from Earth, then pick a real infrared survey telescope to see whether the resulting apparent magnitude clears that instrument's detection limit — exactly the calculation astronomers run when searching wide-field infrared surveys for isolated, sub-brown-dwarf objects drifting alone through the galaxy.