At a Glance

Discovered in 2016, the planetary mass named SIMP was originally thought to be a brown dwarf planet, or dying star.The planet is 20 light-years from Earth and is exceptionallyhot,with a surface temperature of more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.The researchers say they are stumped byauroras dancing above the planet's poles.

A rogue planet with 12 times the mass of Jupiter with dancing aurorashas beendiscovered just outside our solar system, a new study says.

Discovered in 2016, the planet named SIMP J01365663+0933473, or SIMP for short, was originally thought to be a brown dwarf planet, or dying star. Recently astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array to probe the planet’s radio emissions determined the object to be a .

“This object is right at the and abrown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets,” lead author Melodie Kao of the California Institute of Technology Caltech and a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State Universitysaid in a press release.

Astronomers originally came to the conclusion that the object was a brown dwarfbecause of its mass and because it does not revolve around a star like a planet typically does. Instead, the 200-million-year-old planet rotates around the galactic center of the Milky Way in interstellar space.

Brown dwarfs are generally "too massive to be considered planets, yet not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen in their cores — the process that powers stars," the researchers note.

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SIMP is 20 light-years from Earth and has a surface temperature of more than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Its magnetic field is 200 times that of Jupiter.

The researchers say they are stumped byauroras dancing above the planet's poles. It's an odd feature considering it doesn't have a star to send off the particles that create the auroras when they hit the planet's atmosphere. Instead, they believe there may be another yet-to-be-discovered planet or moon orbiting the planet.

AstronomerGregg Hallinan of Caltech noted that the research “presents huge challenges to our understanding of the dynamo mechanism that produces the magnetic fields in brown dwarfs and exoplanets and helps drive the auroras we see."

Although the discovery of a rogue planet is rare, with only a few identified to date, scientists believe there could be many more in the universe waiting to be discovered.