has there been a planet found in any other galaxy ?if so please name it?

Answer 1

Dear Sir:

Your question is interesting but shows some misunderstanding of the process involved in finding and identifying other planets outside our Solar System. Let me try to help you a little bit.

First of all, imagine standing on a country road in the middle of the night. On this night there is cloud cover so the Moon and stars are not visable. Also, there are no street lights or lights from nearby houses. So, it is very dark out there. A car approaches you with its bright headlights turned on. Now, look at the car and tell me when you stare directly at the approaching car with its bright headlights, what other things can you see about the car? How many occupants are in the car? Is the car a 4 door sedan, a 2 door coupe, or a convertable? Is the car towing a trailer? Can you see any road signs behind the car? Most likely you see nothing but the very intense headlights of the car... And the same thing is true of other stars, like our Sun, which are scattered all over the sky. In general what we see is the light from the stars themselves, and we cannot see the various planets with their moons orbiting them.

Now, the Milky Way Galaxy is a disk shaped configuration which is 1500 Light Years thick and 100,000 Light Years wide. A huge ball of stars lies at the core and it is proposed that even a black hole exists at the very center of it. The center ball of stars in our Galaxy is roughly 12,000 Light Years wide.

The Milky Way Galaxy contains more than 200 Billion Stars.

Each one of those stars "may" have from 0 to 10 (or more) planets with their associated moons orbiting around them and creating a solar system of their own.

Beyond the Milky Way there are thousands and thousands of other galaxies with billions of stars inside each one of them. And, as with ours, each one of those stars "could" have from 0 to 10 (or more) planets with their associated moons orbiting around them and making up many, many more far off solar systems.

Since planets and moons do not themselves give off any light (only visable via reflected light [ which is scattered light rays and not as intense as directly radiated light] ) and our optical sensors are more or less blinded by the intensity of the light from the particular star we are focused upon...another means of detection of extrasolarsystem planets is most often used.

When observing a particular star over a long period, the light from the star will vary somewhat as one of the star's planets moves between that star and us. The variation might be a drop in intensity or a color of light change. If the time length of that change and its repetition rate remain constant over very long periods of time the variation is said to be caused by an orbiting planet. Now this is only effective for large planets. Smaller planets do not cause this detectable variation in most cases. Various deductions can be made about the size and distance the planet is from the star once the repitation rate and duration are clearly established through extended observations. Also, several variations at different rates and durations might indicate several planets out there, etc., etc.

So, with all of this understood (if you read it carefully, several times) it should become obvious that most observations seeking Earth equivalent planets are made within our Galaxy (100,000 Light Years wide). I suspect that this search will last for a long time before anyone tries to search any of the other galaxies. You never can tell though...

One last point... Up above in the text I wrote I said each one of those stars "could have"....etc., etc. About half of all stars are not "single" stars like our Sun. The remainder are Binary stars (two stars rapidly orbiting each other at a close distance), Trinary stars (three doing the same thing), or Clusters (a mass of stars doing the same thing). I do not think that it is possible for those multi - stars to have normal solar systems of orbiting planets because of the confused patterns of gravitational pull they might exhibit. However, that is only my thought and not something I have found in any Astronomy text book.

And, several folks have responded to your question with names of recently discovered planets outside of our Solar System. I regret to inform you that unless I am sadly mistaken, all of those discoveries are "within" the Milky Way Galaxy and not outside of it in "some other galaxy." It is fairly obvious that a lot of people do not understand the concept of galaxies or the size of ours very well, and that further study on their part might be advised. One extraSolarSystem planet for example was named and listed as 20 Light Years away from us. If you were reading carefully, you noted that our Galaxy was 1500 Light Years "THICK" and 100,000 Light Years "WIDE", so that star and its Earthlike planet are well within our Milky Way Galaxy.

Regards,

Zah

Answer 2

No there have not been any exoplanets found in any other galaxy. Both Gliese 581 c and OGLE-2005-BLG-390L b are members of this galaxy, the Milky Way as are the other 239 exoplanets about which we now know. (It seems some people don't know what the difference between a solar system and a galaxy is!)

Gliese 581 is part of the constellation Libra and close to the bright star Beta Librae in the sky. It is a red dwarf 20.4 light years away from the Sun, Its planet orbits very close to the star and it is therefore warm enough for life to exist and take root there, Its mass is approx 5 Earth Masses.

OGLE-2005-BLG-390L is also a red dwarf, at 21,500 light years away from the Sun, the furthest star with an exoplanet yet known about. Its planet orbits 3 AU from the star and it is therefore far too cold for life to exist and take root there, Its mass is approx 5.5 Earth Masses.

The galaxy is 100,000 light ears across so there are major parts of our own galaxy we have not yet trawled thoroughly for suitable exoplanets, yet.

DETAILS OF GLIESE 581c

This newly-discovered planet where life is thought to be feasible orbits Gliese 581, one of the nearest 100 stars to us, 20.4 light years away.

The new planet was found on 23rd April 2007 by a team led by Stephane Udry of Geneva University, The observatory they used was high in the Chilean Andes, where good viewing conditions would be available.

It is in the constellation Libra. It is the 87th closest star system to us. Its star (a Red Dwarf) is too faint to be seen with the naked eye, however. Its magnitude is 11.56.

What is unusual about Gliese 581c, amongst the 241 planets we have found orbiting other stars is

a) it is a rocky terrestrial planet not a gas giant

b) it is in the habitable zone i.e. with a temperature range at which water would be a liquid not ice. This is felt to be essential if it is to harbour life.

c) it has a radius 1.5 times that of earth (and a mass 5 x earth), the smallest yet,

(d) It orbits very close to its star (as the star, a Red Dwarf, is much cooler than our Sun, the planet needs to be nearer in to be warm enough to be habitable) and its year is a mere 13 Earth days in length.

There are two other planets in the same stellar system, one even further in (Gliese 581 b) a Neptune-sized planet of 17 Earth masses found in 2005 and one further out (Gliese 581 d) a planet of 8 Earth masses found in 2007.

The big question marks are:

(a) it is big enough to retain an atmosphere but is it breathable by humans?

(b) does it actually have (a plentiful supply of) water?

(c) how would we get there? (our present fastest rockets available would take 300,000 years)

(d) is the planet gravitationally locked to ts star, such that the same side of it always faces the star?

Many of the questions people will inevitably ask can only be answered when we can send an unmanned probe there. Meanwhile other planets will be found even nearer to us. (We know of a planet 10.5 light years away around Epsilon Eridani (the 9th nearest star) and 3 around Gliese 876, 15 light years away.)

Wilhelm Gliese was a German astronomer, best known for the Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars that he compiled.

Answer 3

So far, it is impossible to locate a planet in any other galaxy as all galaxies are millions of light years( the distance a ray of light travels in 1 year) and also no telescope has been made so far.

Answer 4

The nerest galaxy is far beyond our current technique's capability to detect a planet revolving around a parent star.
All extrasolar planets discovered so far are relatively close, and therefore in our own galaxy.

Answer 5

No. We can barely see individual stars in other galaxies, even with the most powerful telescopes, and only in very nearby galaxies such as the Magellanic clouds and Andromeda.

Answer 6

There are probably billions of planets in other galaxies,but no technique has been developed to detect them.
Except where where superman came from,Krypton!

Answer 7

There are some in our galaxy but nothing found so far outside ours.

Answer 8

Astronomers discoverd of the most Earthlike planet ever detected outside of our solar system.

The planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

Answer 9

Look up Barnard's Star for a planet there.

Answer 10

Yes there has been.
http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0425_Most_EarthLike_Planet_Discovered.html
It was found a while back, but is almost confirmed now.
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070517_seti_planet.html
Is very far away, but looks neato.
NPR says it is in Libra.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9796321
That is neato!
Its name is Gliese 581c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581_c