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Over the last 15 years, nearly 500 planets have been identified, but none outside our galaxy – Milky Way – has been confirmed. This one has been discovered orbiting a star known as HIP 13044, lying about 2,000 light years from the Earth in the constellation Fornax. The planet, around 20 percent larger than Jupiter, was identified by ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
The planet is orbiting a star from the Helmi stream, a group of stars that originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that was about six to nine billion years ago devoured by the Milky Way.
“This discovery is very exciting,” said Rainer Klement of Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. “For the first time, astronomers have detected a planetary system in a stellar stream of extragalactic origin. Because of the great distances involved, there are no confirmed detections of planets in other galaxies. But this cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach.”
The scientists say this planet survived the period when its host star expanded massively after exhausting the hydrogen fuel supply in its core.
“The discovery is particularly intriguing when we consider the distant future of our own planetary system, as the Sun is also expected to become a red giant in about five billion years,” added Johny Setiawan, from the Max Planck Institute.
