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We are not alone in our galaxy. We have a visitor. By the name of HIP 13044 b? Leave it to science to find a really poetic name.
“Astronomers say they’ve found the first known planet to orbit a star that began its life outside our own Milky Way galaxy. In the last 15 years, almost 500 planets have been detected orbiting stars in our galaxy. But until now, no planet has been discovered that came from another galaxy.The discovery of a giant planet around the star HIP 13044 changes all that, a team of astronomers claims.”
“Because of the great distances involved, there are no confirmed detections of planets in other galaxies,” he said in a statement. “But this cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach.”
The planet — named HIP 13044 b — lies about 2,000 light years from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax. Its mass is at least 1.25 times that of Jupiter’s and takes only 16.2 days to complete an orbit.
It was discovered by looking for the tiny wobbles produced when an orbiting object creates a pull on a star’s gravity. Astronomers used a high-resolution spectrograph attached to the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Way to go astronomers. I’m looking forward to more news on our first exoplanet discovery.
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