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Originally Posted by Daradon
But, even if it's extremely rare, could a star conceivably be knocked out of a galaxy's gravity well and exist outside a galaxy, like a comet or other things? And if so, do we know of any such examples?
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Sure don't see why not, I've seen simulations of galaxy collisions where it seems tons of stars get ejected.
As for detecting them, I'm not sure we could. We can see galaxies at galactic distances but that's hundreds of billions of stars. Hubble can discern individual stars in Andromeda, so I guess if it was a wandering star at that range it's possible.. finding one would be a real challenge though, that's a lot of space. To look at the entire sky the way Hubble did for the ultra deep field would take a million years.