Rogue Objects is based on emerging astrophysics research regarding brown dwarfs, a lesser-known class of celestial bodies that are neither planets nor stars, but somewhere in between with regards to mass and brightness. Some brown dwarfs orbit stars, like planets do; other brown dwarfs host planets, like stars do. Brown dwarfs emit their light primarily in the infrared, just outside the wavelengths we can see with our own eyes. And whereas stars have infused every aspect of our culture for millennia — art, love songs, poetry, social structures, divination — we’ve barely broken ground on our cultural relationship with brown dwarfs.