Ability to View Stars in Other Galaxies?

Question

Are we able to observe, name, et cetera, stars in other galaxies?
Even if so, I would assume that we would be unable to achieve such discoveries as extrasolar planets and the like as we are in our own galaxy?

Answer 1

Individual stars have been observed in other galaxies for almost a hundred years. In 1923 the observation of one of these extra-galactic stars changed mankind's understanding of the size and structure of the universe. The ability to resolve individual stars is dependent on both the distance and brightness of the star as well as the resolving power of the specific telescope.

In 1923, Edwin Hubble was examining photographic plates of the Andromeda Nebula M31, taken with the 100-inch telescope in order to find novae.He did find 2 novae but he also found a type of star called a Cepheid variable. This Cepheid, and others subsequently discovered in the Andromeda Nebula, enabled Hubble to prove that the Nebula was not a star cluster within our own Milky Way, but a galaxy more than a million light years away.

Answer 2

To further answer your questions, plans are being made to send a satellite called the Kepler Mission to search for other planets in 2008. But they are only looking at nearby stars in our own galaxy. To see planets in another galaxy would require a telescope far too large for us to make and put in space at this time and in the near future. Click on http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/ for more information on the Kepler Mission.

Answer 3

The most powerful telescopes doing very long photographic exposures can pick out individual stars in the nearer galaxies. The only 'star' we can see in distant galaxies with the naked eye are those stars that have exploded (..called a 'supernova'..)

Answer 4

There are scientists who've tried to place a type on the potential of existence. frequently they multiply many factors mandatory for existence at the same time. the subject with such strategies is they continually flow away out quite some things which could impact the end result. i've got faith the risk of existence is a lot decrease than maximum folk, alongside with scientists, have faith. this is to no longer say i've got faith we are the only existence interior the universe; yet I do have faith we are a uncommon journey. Given how uncommon existence is even between billions and billions of possibilities and given how huge this ever increasing universe is, i do no longer think we are able to ever bump into aliens. yet they do make good technology fiction.