NASA May Have Found the First Planet in Another Galaxy

[Zorro]

It’s 28 million light-years away and might be sitting next to a black hole.

A few decades ago, scientists weren’t sure there were any planets outside of the nine (or eight) orbiting the sun. Fast forward to today, and they have now catalogued almost 5,000 planets residing in other star systems.

They may have one more to add to the list, but it’s a big one: In a new study that was published in Nature Astronomy on Monday, researchers said they may have found the first planet detected in another galaxy.

“We know we are making an exciting and bold claim so we expect that other astronomers will look at it very carefully,” study co-author Julia Berndtsson of Princeton University said in a statement. “We think we have a strong argument, and this process is how science works.”

The planet looks to be the size of Saturn, and is located in the spiral galaxy Messier 51 (also called the Whirlpool Galaxy), 28 million light-years away. Called M51-ULS-1 for now, it seems to be orbiting a star 20 times more massive than the sun, and is in close proximity to a black hole or neutron star found in the same system.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/nasa-may-have-found-the-first-planet-in-another-galaxy

[lagomorph777]

1. That's astounding. It's finicky enough, trying to find them in our own galactic neighborhood.

All the available methods (Doppler, transits, microlensing, apparent motion, imaging) rely on powerful telescopes, finely tuned detectors, masses of computation, and rare spatial alignments.

Making all that work, ten thousand times farther away than before, is quite a feat.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. Another Astounding Thing

Messier 51 is only a bit outside the Local Group, because the distance between the local group members farthest from us in opposite direction is 20 million light years.
So, 28 million light years is almost "local" in the vastness of space.

[lagomorph777]

4. Yeah, but compared to the planet-hunting we've done so far, it's VERY far away.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. No Doubt About It

Everything here is the Milky Way is under 150,000 light years away.
We're talking almost 200x that in this find.
Since it's a giant gas planet, I find it more likely to be accurate. Lots of gravity to bend light, lots of xray & gamma absorption from the background.
Super cool.

[lagomorph777]

6. It seems to be a lucky alignment with an unusually small source.

The black hole's accretion disk is very small compared to a star. So if you're very lucky, a large-ish planet can occult its X-ray emissions. Saturn-sized is not all that large as planets go (compared to the super-Jupiters we've found so many of). NASA lucked out because it happened to have an orbital plane that we view edge-on, and the timing (once in 70 years) was also extremely lucky.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. That's Probably True Of Many Of These Finds

Given the way they can be detected, a bit of fortuitous alignment is probably a piece of all these identification.
Perhaps they got galactically lucky!

[lagomorph777]

8. Glactically lucky (and starting with a galactic sample size).

The key is to grab data from, and process, millions of stars at once.

[stillcool]

2. the whirlpool galaxy is one of my mate's favorites

guess we'll be visiting it a little more. So much fun, fascinating really, when new things to us mere mortals are sighted in the sky.