According to a new study report, researchers have located 4 rogue planets near the center of our galaxy. In the study report, which has been published in 'Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society', the free-floating planets are said to become of similar mass to Earth and have no host star.

Astronomers say such rogue planets are the celestial objects, which have possibly been ejected from their star systems by the gravitational tug of heavier planets.

For the research, which was led by Iain McDonald of the University of Manchester, UK, researchers had used data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. During that two-month campaign, Kepler had monitored a crowded field of millions of stars near the center of our Galaxy every 30 minutes in order to find rare gravitational microlensing events.

As reported, the team had found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days. Most of the signals had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground. But they say that the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth.

As previous research has suggested, rogue planets could hang onto nearly half their moons during the ejection process and potentially maintain conditions for life for billions of years, even after being ejected out of their solar systems,

For the discovery, the researchers had used microlensing technique. Microlensing technique describes how the light from a background star can be temporarily magnified by the presence of other stars in the foreground. It produces a short burst in brightness that can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days.