An extragalactic planet, also known as an extragalactic exoplanet, is a star-bound planet or rogue planet located outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. Due to the huge distances to such worlds, they would be very hard to detect directly. However, indirect evidence suggests that such planets may exist. Nonetheless, the most distant known planets are SWEEPS-11 and SWEEPS-04, located in Sagittarius, approximately 27,710 light-years from the Sun, while the Milky Way is between 100,000 and 180,000 light years in diameter. This means that even galactic planets located farther than that distance have not been detected.
A planet with a mass of at least 1.25 times that of Jupiter had been potentially discovered by the European Southern Observatory orbiting a star of extragalactic origin, even though the star now has been absorbed by our own galaxy. HIP 13044 is a star about 2,000 light years away in the southern constellation of Fornax, part of the Helmi streamof stars, a leftover remnant of a small galaxy that collided with and was absorbed by the Milky Way over 6 billion years ago. However, subsequent analysis of the data revealed problems with the potential planetary detection: for example an erroneous barycentric correction had been applied. After applying the corrections, there is no evidence for a planet orbiting the star. If it had been real, the Jupiter-like planet would have been particularly interesting, orbiting a star nearing the end of its life and seemingly about to be engulfed by it, potentially providing an observational model for the fate of our own planetary system in the distant future.
Twin Quasar-related planet
A microlensing event in the Twin Quasargravitational lensing system was observed in 1996, by R. E. Schild, in the "A" lobe of the lensed quasar. It is predicted that a 3-Earth-mass planet in the lensing galaxy, YGKOW G1, caused the event. This was the first extragalactic planet candidate announced. This, however, is not a repeatable observation, as it was a one-time chance alignment. This predicted planet lies 4 billion light years away.
A team of scientists has used gravitational microlensing to come up with a tentative detection of an extragalactic exoplanet in Andromeda, the Milky Way's nearest large galactic neighbor. The lensing pattern fits a star with a smaller companion, PA-99-N2, weighing just around 6.34 times the mass of Jupiter. This suspected planet is the first announced in the Andromeda Galaxy.
