HIP 13044 B: Our Galaxy Gets A Planetary Immigrant
Thursday, November 18, 2010 - 15:21
in Astronomy & Space
An exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our Milky Way from another galaxy has been detected by astronomers. This Jupiter-like planet is unusual because it is orbiting a star nearing the end of its life and could be about to be engulfed by it. Over the last 15 years, astronomers have detected nearly 500 planets orbiting stars in our cosmic neighborhood, but none outside our Milky Way has been confirmed. The planet has a minimum mass 1.25 times that of Jupiter and is part of the so-called Helmi stream — a group of stars that originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy that was devoured by our galaxy, the Milky Way, in an act of galactic cannibalism about six to nine billion years ago. read more