The discovery is the first to detect and place a planetary body in an entirely different galaxy.
NASA/CXC/M. WeissFor the first time, astronomers have detected evidence of a planet in a galaxy beyond our own. The yet unnamed exoplanet lies in the Messier 51, often referred to as the “Whirlpool” galaxy, around 28 million light-years from Earth.
Astronomers and planetary scientists have discovered nearly 5,000 exoplanets so far, but all were found within the confines of our own Milky Way galaxy. The new discovery is the first to detect and place a planetary body in an entirely different galaxy—a feat achieved by using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope to observe “transit,” when a planet passes in front of a star and blocks its rays.
“Unfortunately to confirm that we’re seeing a planet we would likely have to wait decades to see another transit,” said co-author Nia Imara, a University of California at Santa Cruz astrophysicist, in the NASA statement. “And because of the uncertainties about how long it takes to orbit, we wouldn’t know exactly when to look.”
That uncertainty with timing has other planetary scientists wondering how useful this method of detecting x-ray transits is and how often it should be used. Bruce Macintosh, a Stanford University astrophysicist who wasn’t involved with the research, toldthat studying X-ray transits is “clever,” but since “you can only see transits when objects line up just right between you and the thing you’re looking at” it’s unlikely that it could be used to find hundreds of thousands of planetary candidates.
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