( CNN ) -- It 's just a newborn in planetary terms , and it 's drifting all alone in space without a star to orbit . The solitary life of this newly discovered planet , with the catchy name PSO J318.5-22 , has astronomers excited . Only 80 light-years from Earth , the 12 million-year-old planet has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets orbiting young stars . Diamonds produced on other planets ? But because it is floating alone through space , rather than around a host star , astronomers can study it much more easily . `` We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this , '' said Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa , who led the international team that discovered the planet . `` It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars , but it is drifting out there all alone . I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist , and now we know they do . '' Stargazing in the desert : The magic of Namibia 's night skies . While about a thousand planets have been discovered outside our solar system in the past decade by indirect means -- such as observing the wobbling or dimming of their host stars as they orbit -- only a handful of new planets have been directly imaged , all of them around young stars , according to a release from the Institute for Astronomy . Young stars are those less than 200 million years old . PSO J318.5-22 's solitary existence and its similarity to those directly observed planets makes it a rare find . `` Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study , since they are right next to their much brighter host stars . PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study , '' said Dr. Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and a co-author of the study . `` It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth . '' The astronomers stumbled across it as they sifted through a mountain of data produced by the Pan-STARRS 1 ( PS1 ) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala , Maui . Astronaut : Real space travel much cooler than 'Gravity ' The planet , which has only six times the mass of Jupiter , was identified by its faint and unique heat signature . The astronomers were actually searching for failed stars known as brown dwarfs when they came across PSO J318.5-22 , which stood out because of its red color . Subsequent infrared observations using other telescopes in Hawaii showed it was no brown dwarf , but rather a young , low-mass planet . By monitoring the planet 's position for the next two years , using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope , the team was able directly to measure its distance from Earth . This means the astronomers have placed it within a collection of young stars called the Beta Pictoris moving group that formed about 12 million years ago . The star that lends its name to the group , Beta Pictoris , has another young gas-giant planet in orbit around it , the astronomers say . But PSO J318.5-22 , which appears to be even lower in mass than that planet , continues to wend its solitary way through the universe , unattached to any star . Newly found planets might support life .
Astronomers find a young , low-mass planet wandering through space alone . ` Comment: The planet will give an insight into the workings of young gas-giant planets like Jupiter . It is easier to observe than other similar planets because it is not orbiting a young star .