The universe is vast.Therefore, we should expect to find planets not only in our current galaxy but also in other distant planets.
According to a recent study published in the journal Nature Astronomy and published on Chandra’s official website, astronomers have first discovered a possible orbiting planet beyond our Milky Way galaxy.
The planet is located inside the snail-shaped galaxy Messier 51 (M51) or Whirlpool.
The astonishing discovery using NASA‘s Chandra X-ray Observatory has opened new doors to search for planets farther away than ever before.
An alien planet in another galaxy may be orbiting a black hole.
Exoplanets have been discovered in the past in our Milky Way galaxy, and almost all of them are located less than 3,000 light-years from our planet.
The planet in the M51 galaxy is about 28 million light-years from Earth, thousands of times farther away than the other planets found in our Milky Way galaxy.
The new discovery relies on observations of distant exoplanets, as well as the search for the light of a star passing by a planet passing between us and the star.
Astronomers have used space and ground-based telescopes, such as NASA’s TESS and Kepler missions.
The Exoplant from another galaxy has been found to be about the size of Saturn in the solar system.
Objects near a black hole or neutron star reach an extreme temperature and appear bright on X-rays.
However, due to the small size of the X-ray emitted, the planet passing in front of it can block most of the X-rays and simplify the transit detection process.
Exoplanets are able to locate their stars farther away than those found through conventional optical light transit observations, as they can only physically block their starlight.
Using the X-ray method, Di Stefano and a wider team of researchers discovered the planet in a dual galaxy called M51-ULS-1 in the M51 galaxy.
The system consists of a neutron star, or black hole, orbiting a companion star about 20 times the mass of the sun.
X-ray transit monitoring via Chandra data lasted approximately three hours until the X-ray emission dropped to zero.
Researchers have speculated that the planet, which is roughly the size of Saturn and orbits a black hole or neutron orbit about twice as far as our Sun.
This is an incredible historical discovery for modern astronomy to confirm the findings
More information is needed, but it could be considered the beginning of a study of planets (intergalactic exoplanets) between galaxies.