How do we search (and find) exoplanets
How do we search (and find) exoplanets
It is practically impossible to directly observe a planet because its light is about a million times weaker than that of its star. It’s a bit like trying to see a firefly placed next to the lighthouse of a car. So that’s why we had to develop so-called indirect techniques like: Transits, when looking at […]
Continue ReadingHow many exoplanets are there?
1901 known exoplanets were listed in March 2015 by the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. The catalogue is regularly updated and steadily growing. There are over 3000 so called candidates that wait for confirmation. Planets seem to be very common objects in the universe – the rule rather than the exception. An average galaxy like our Milky […]
Continue ReadingDo we have photos of exoplanets?
After the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995 by measuring the gravitational influence of the planet on its star by the radial velocity method, we had to wait 13 years to have the first true picture of an exoplanet. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2008. The object is called Fomalhaut b, […]
Continue ReadingHow are exoplanets named?
51 Pegasi b is the famous object Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered in 1995 – an exoplanet around a star in the constellation Pegasus. The star was labelled 51 Pegasi by English astronomer John Flamsteed in 1712 in his star atlas. The lowercase letter “b” indicates that it was the first exoplanet discovered orbiting […]
Continue Reading
