Using the light-warping effects of gravity, astronomers have detected a massive object right in the center of our galaxy. The universe is teeming with cranky objects that simply don’t fall into certain categories, just like Pluto. Astronomers are dubious of what exactly this massive object is, named OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb, a huge star or a flunked star.
OGLE, 13 times the size of Jupiter orbiting a star about 22,000 light years away from Earth, is not as big as the record-breaking giant DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b, which is 29 times the mass of Jupiter.
NASA’s Spitzer has been set into Earth’s orbit around Sun since 2003 to find exoplanets, using Microlensing, which no one contemplated when it was first launched. Microlensing is comparatively an efficient technique for identifying details about stars, planets, and even galaxies. Gravity is the warping of space, which means a massive object can warp space into what is effectively a lens. The more conventional approach is to watch for the dimming of a star as a planet passes in front of it.
OGLE lies in the expanse of what’s known as the Brown Dwarf desert, theorized as a range of orbits devoid of “failed stars”. It could still be a brown dwarf star, a wannabe that isn't even big enough itself to trigger a serious nuclear incineration, OGLE's mass puts it at the lower limit of what's needed to get it started. OGLE has an orbit roughly 5 AU, 1 AU equals 150 million kilometers, from its companion star that takes about three years to complete.
It's grown to strangely enormous extent if it’s a planet.
By further engineering and engendering perfection in microlensing, we can have a better and more accurate insight of how such massive objects sprout into stars, and their relationship with their companion stars.