Recently, the astronomy team at Westlake University has launched a detection program targeting rogue planets. The project, abbreviated as the DREAMS program, is co-led by Dr. Hongjing Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Science of Westlake University, and Dr. Weicheng Zang, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

The DREAMS program has now been officially approved by the U.S. National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory as a three-year survey project. It has been allocated a total of 56 nights of telescope observing time between 2025 and 2028.

In Yang Hongjing's view, free-floating rogue planets are one of the most mysterious populations of objects in the Milky Way. They may be remnants of violent dynamical evolution in planetary systems, and studying their mass distribution will help astronomers reveal the processes behind the formation and evolution of planetary systems.

According to the team, they expect in the future to discover more than 100 rogue planets, including some with masses comparable to Mars or even the Moon.

Zang Weicheng noted that, in addition to detecting rogue planets, the project will also measure the occurrence rate of wide-orbit planets and release light curves for hundreds of millions of stars to the entire astronomical community, thereby advancing scientific research in multiple fields of astronomy, including white dwarfs, asteroids, and variable stars.