NASA Telescope Successfully Identify Extrasolar Planets In Other Galaxies

The American Space Agency (NASA) has just announced that it has discovered the first planet outside the Milky Way galaxy. (photo: NASA)

JAKARTA - The American Space Agency (NASA) has just announced that it has discovered the first planet outside the Milky Way galaxy, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope.

This discovery could open a new window for searching for exoplanets at greater distances than before. The exoplanet scientists believe they have found in a neighboring galaxy, known as M51, or the Whirlpool Galaxy because of its distinctive shape, will be about 28 million light-years away.

An exoplanet is a planet outside the Solar System, which usually orbits a star other than the Sun in our galaxy. To date, all other exoplanets have been discovered in the Milky Way, and most have been found less than 3,000 light-years from Earth.

"We're trying to open up a new arena for discovering other worlds by looking for planet candidates at X-ray wavelengths, a strategy that makes it possible to find them in other galaxies," said lead researcher Rosanne Di Stefano as quoted by CNN International, Tuesday, October 27. .

Di Stefano and colleagues looked for a decrease in the brightness of the X-rays received from the bright binary X-rays. These luminous systems typically contain neutron stars or black holes that draw gas from a close-orbiting companion star. Material near a neutron star or black hole becomes very hot and glows in X-rays.

Because the region that produces bright X-rays is small, a planet passing in front of it can block most or all of the X-rays, making transiting planets easier to spot because they will block most or all of the X-rays. This allows exoplanets to be detected at much greater distances.

However, one of the challenges is that researchers will have to wait longer to determine whether they have found an extragalactic planet. Because of their large orbits, the candidate planet won't pass in front of its binary partner for another 70 years, meaning it could take decades to confirm observations.

If the planet exists, it may have to survive a supernova explosion that creates a neutron star or black hole. The future is claimed to be very dangerous. At some point, the companion star could also explode as a supernova and blow up the planet once again with very high levels of radiation.

Going forward, the researchers plan to look for X-ray transits in the Milky Way's X-ray sources to find nearby new planets in unusual environments.