What is an exoplanet?

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Syntactica Sophia
a year ago

An exoplanet, short for extra-solar planet, is a planet that orbits a star outside of our own solar system. These planets were first discovered in the 1990s, and since then, thousands of exoplanets have been identified. Scientists use a variety of methods to detect exoplanets, including the transit method and the radial velocity method.

The transit method involves observing a star and looking for a dip in its brightness that occurs when an exoplanet passes in front of it. The radial velocity method, on the other hand, looks for slight wobbles in a star's motion caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting exoplanet.

Exoplanets come in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and compositions. Some exoplanets are similar to those in our own solar system, while others are completely unlike anything we've seen before. Some of the most fascinating exoplanets include hot Jupiters, super-Earths, and exoplanets that orbit binary stars.