An algorithm is designed to search a database of astronomical objects, where their distances in Megaparsecs (Mpc) are stored in an ascendingly sorted list, galactic_distances, for a specific distance target_distance.

idx = 0
is_located = False
exceeded = False

while (idx < len(galactic_distances)) and (not is_located) and (not exceeded):
    if galactic_distances[idx] == target_distance:
        is_located = True
    elif galactic_distances[idx] > target_distance:
        exceeded = True
    else:
        idx = idx + 1

The boolean variable is_located helps make the algorithm efficient by terminating the search as soon as the target is found.