Star on route to exit the Milk Way

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA have identified a star that is blazing across our galaxy at 700 km/s, a pace that will allow it to escape our galaxy.

It is believed that the star was previously a binary star, spinning with a partner star and orbiting our Milky Way galaxy. The star likely got too close to the black hole at the center of the galaxy and got swung around the center. This sling-shot effect gave the star a tremendous amount of speed, hurling the star out of its orbit and across the galaxy at a speed that is twice the necessary escape speed, the speed at which an object can break free of the galaxtic gravity. The star will travel to the edge of the galaxy, and moving to fast for gravity to stop it, it will enter intergalactic space towards, well... who knows. This is not the first time that this kind of rouge star has been observed. Link.