Dr. Rosanne Di Stefano is an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her work has encompassed a broad range of astronomical systems: stars interacting within dense stellar environments, the evolution of supernovae, X-ray astronomy, and gravitational microlensing.

Her team has recently found a possible planet candidate in the Whirlpool galaxy. It is the first candidate planet in a distant galaxy. The Whirlpool is 31 million light years away. This planet candidate is the first found to be orbiting a high-mass star.

In our own Galaxy, astronomers have discovered more than 4800 planets, but the stars they orbit are less massive. While transits of small portions of the light emitted by ordinary stars have led to the discovery of thousands of candidate planets, this is the first time X-rays are used to search for a real orbiting planet.

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