this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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That's looks like a picture of Jupiter, or an artists impression of it, and there's a star needed for an aurora to happen.
Any scientific sources to back this story up?
No it is indeed an artists impression of the planet - it's on the wiki page.
I'm assuming that aurora only needs solar wind to happen on earth - or that solar wind outside the heliosphere is strong enough you don't need a star for it to happen.
The picture is definitely just some artist's conception, but it's not claimed to be a photo or meant to be anything other than what it is, an artist's conception. You're right that for the most part, a star is needed for aurora, at least for the kind of aurora we have on Earth since it depends on the solar wind interacting with the planet's magnetic field. But if there is anything that can be said about what we've discovered astronomically in the last century or so it's that there are always exceptions to every supposed rule.
Aside from the aurora part though, none of this is exceptional or rare (and maybe even the aurora part isn't rare either). Rogue planets are probably extremely common, possibly even more common than planets that are gravitationally bound in a star system. And objects of this size, which is really around where we'd start calling it a brown dwarf, are also very common, with more of them than there are main sequence stars.
Thanks