Beyond the Milky Way
To date, astronomers have discovered more than 4,000 exoplanets – planets outside of our Solar system – in the Milky Way galaxy.
Recently, NASA scientists came across the first exoplanet located in a galaxy far, far away, NPR reported.
Using the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers said that the unnamed planet was found in the Messier 51 – or “Whirlpool” galaxy – which is about 28 million light-years from Earth.
The team explained that they were able to detect the exoplanet by studying its transit – when a planet passes in front of a star and blocks the latter’s light.
They described the exoplanet as being roughly the same size as Saturn and possibly having a “violent past”: The planet is currently orbiting a neutron star or a black hole with a companion star nearly 20 times the size of the Sun, according to Sky News.
“An exoplanet in the system would have had to survive a supernova explosion that created the neutron star or black hole,” NASA suggested.
There is still much to learn about the new celestial body but the space organization hopes that the find provides a beacon of hope for many looking for planets outside the Milky Way.
“We are trying to open up a whole new arena for finding other worlds by searching for planet candidates at X-ray wavelengths, a strategy that makes it possible to discover them in other galaxies,” Rosanne Di Stefano of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said.
No comments:
Post a Comment