For the first time ever, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory may have discovered the first exoplanet outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s located in the spiral galaxy Messier 51 (M51), also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy due to its distinctive profile. Astronomers have found a multitude of exoplanets and exoplanet candidates within the Milky Way galaxy, almost all of which lie 3,000 light-years from Earth. Read more for a short news segment and additional information.
This exoplanet in M51 would be located approximately 28 million light-years away, or thousands of times further away than those in the Milky Way. The planet was found based on transits, which are essentially events in which its passage in front of a star blocks some of the light, thus producing a characteristic dip. It’s located in a binary system called M51-ULS-1, located in M51, and contains a black hole or neutron star orbiting a companion star.
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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,” said Rosanne Di Stefano of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the study, which was published today in Nature Astronomy.
