An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not then recognized as such. The first confirmation of the detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, first detected in 1988, was confirmed in 2003. According to statistics from the NASA Exoplanet Archive, As of 6 September 2024, there are 5,756 confirmed exoplanets in 4,297 planetary systems, with 963 systems having more than one planet. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to discover more exoplanets, and to give more insight into their traits, such as their composition, environmental conditions, and potential for life.
The Kepler space telescope is a defunct space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine and a half years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018.
A Super-Earth is a type of exoplanet with a mass higher than Earth's, but substantially below those of the Solar System's ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth's, respectively. The term "super-Earth" refers only to the mass of the planet, and so does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability. The alternative term "gas dwarfs" may be more accurate for those at the higher end of the mass scale, although "mini-Neptunes" is a more common term.
An exoplanet is a planet located outside the Solar System. The first evidence of an exoplanet was noted as early as 1917, but was not recognized as such until 2016; no planet discovery has yet come from that evidence. What turned out to be the first detection of an exoplanet was published among a list of possible candidates in 1988, though not confirmed until 2003. The first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star was made in 1995, when a giant planet was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Pegasi. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method and the radial-velocity method. As of 24 July 2024, there are 7,026 confirmed exoplanets in 4,949 planetary systems, with 1007 systems having more than one planet. This is a list of the most notable discoveries.
A Kepler object of interest (KOI) is a star observed by the Kepler space telescope that is suspected of hosting one or more transiting planets. KOIs come from a master list of 150,000 stars, which itself is generated from the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC). A KOI shows a periodic dimming, indicative of an unseen planet passing between the star and Earth, eclipsing part of the star. However, such an observed dimming is not a guarantee of a transiting planet, because other astronomical objects—such as an eclipsing binary in the background—can mimic a transit signal. For this reason, the majority of KOIs are as yet not confirmed transiting planet systems.
Kepler-20 is a star about 934 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra with a system of at least five, and possibly six, known planets. The apparent magnitude of this star is 12.51, so it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. Viewing it requires a telescope with an aperture of 15 cm (6 in) or more. It is slightly smaller than the Sun, with 94% of the Sun's radius and about 91% of the Sun's mass. The effective temperature of the photosphere is slightly cooler than that of the Sun at 5466 K, giving it the characteristic yellow hue of a stellar class G8 star. The abundance of elements other than hydrogen or helium, what astronomers term the metallicity, is approximately the same as in the Sun. It may be older than the Sun, although the margin of error here is relatively large.
Kepler-34 is an eclipsing binary star system in the constellation of Cygnus. Both stars have roughly the same mass as the Sun and, like the Sun, both are spectral class G. They are separated by 0.22 AU, and complete an eccentric (e=0.5) orbit around a common center of mass every 27 days.
Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by Debra Fischer at Yale University, as part of the Zooniverse project.
Kepler-47 is a binary star system in the constellation Cygnus located about 3,420 light-years away from Earth. The stars have three exoplanets, all of which orbit both stars at the same time, making this a circumbinary system. The first two planets announced are designated Kepler-47b, and Kepler-47c, and the third, later discovery is Kepler-47d. Kepler-47 is the first circumbinary multi-planet system discovered by the Kepler mission. The outermost of the planets is a gas giant orbiting within the habitable zone of the stars. Because most stars are binary, the discovery that multi-planet systems can form in such a system has impacted previous theories of planetary formation.
Kepler-47c is an exoplanet orbiting the binary star system Kepler-47, the outermost of three such planets discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. The system, also involving two other exoplanets, is located about 3,400 light-years away.
Kepler-1647b is a circumbinary exoplanet that orbits the binary star system Kepler-1647, located 3,700 light-years (1,100 pc) from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It was announced on June 13, 2016, in San Diego at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It was detected using the transit method, when it caused the dimming of the primary star, and then again of the secondary star blended with the primary star eclipse. The first transit of the planet was identified in 2012, but at the time the single event was not enough to rule out contamination, or confirm it as a planet. It was discovered by the analysis of the Kepler light-curve, which showed the planet in transit.
Kepler-1625b I, a possible moon of exoplanet Kepler-1625b, may be the first exomoon ever discovered, and was first indicated after preliminary observations by the Kepler Space Telescope. A more thorough observing campaign by the Hubble Space Telescope took place in October 2017, ultimately leading to a discovery paper published in Science Advances in early October 2018. Studies related to the discovery of this moon suggest that the host exoplanet is up to several Jupiter masses in size, and the moon is thought to be approximately the mass of Neptune. Like several moons in the Solar System, the large exomoon would theoretically be able to host its own moon, called a subsatellite, in a stable orbit, although no evidence for such a subsatellite has been found.
K2-18, also known as EPIC 201912552, is a red dwarf star with two planetary companions located 124 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Leo.
TOI-700 is a red dwarf 101.4 light-years away from Earth located in the Dorado constellation that hosts TOI-700 d, the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
TOI-700 d is a near-Earth-sized exoplanet, likely rocky, orbiting within the habitable zone of the red dwarf TOI-700, the outermost planet within the system. It is located roughly 101.4 light-years (31.1 pc) away from Earth in the constellation of Dorado. The exoplanet is the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
TOI-1338 is a binary star system located in the constellation Pictor, about 1,320 light-years from Earth. It is orbited by two known circumbinary planets, TOI-1338 b, discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and BEBOP-1c, discovered by the Binaries Escorted By Orbiting Planets project.
Eric Agol is an American astronomer and astrophysicist who was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.
