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. As of 1 March 2024, there are 5,640 confirmed exoplanets in 4,155 planetary systems, with 895 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.
Chthonian planets are a hypothetical class of celestial objects resulting from the stripping away of a gas giant's hydrogen and helium atmosphere and outer layers, which is called hydrodynamic escape. Such atmospheric stripping is a likely result of proximity to a star. The remaining rocky or metallic core would resemble a terrestrial planet in many respects.
Hot Jupiters are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter but that have very short orbital periods. The close proximity to their stars and high surface-atmosphere temperatures resulted in their informal name "hot Jupiters".
There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed.
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.
This page describes exoplanet orbital and physical parameters.
The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km from the VISTA Survey Telescope. Science operations began in early 2015. The astronomical survey is managed by a consortium of seven European universities and other academic institutions from Chile, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Prototypes of the array were tested in 2009 and 2010 on La Palma, and from 2012 to 2014 at Geneva Observatory.
K2-141b is a massive rocky exoplanet orbiting extremely close to a K Type orange main-sequence star K2-141. The planet was first discovered by the Kepler space telescope during its K2 “Second Light” mission and later observed by the HARPS-N spectrograph. It is classified as an Ultra-short Period (USP) and is confirmed to be terrestrial in nature. Its high density implies a massive iron core taking up between 30% and 50% of the planet's total mass.
TOI-561 is an old, metal-poor, Sun-like star, known to have multiple small planets. It is an orange dwarf, estimated to be 10.5 billion years old, and about 79% the mass and 85% the radius of Sol, Earth's sun.
Gliese 367 b, formally named Tahay, is a sub-Earth exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 367, 30.7 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Vela. The exoplanet takes just 7.7 hours to orbit its star, one of the shortest orbits of any planet.
HIP 67522 b is a hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting the G-type star HIP 67522, located approximately 415 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, discovered using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). It is currently the youngest hot Jupiter discovered, at an age of only 17 million years; it is also one of the youngest transiting planets of any type, and one of only four others less than 100 million years old to have the angle between its orbit and its host star's rotation measured, at 5.8+2.8
−5.7 degrees. This planet, in turn, may help in knowing how other hot Jupiters form.
TOI-561 b is an USP Super-Earth with a radius of roughly 1.4 Earths. It has an extremely short orbital period of under 11 hours, less than half of an Earth day, resulting in an equilibrium temperature of 2,480 ± 200 K. The planet is believed to be far too small and irradiated to hold onto its primordial Hydrogen and Helium envelope. However, the composition of the planet varies greatly between the two studies. Weiss 2020 found a mass of around 3.2 Earths and a density of 5.5 grams per cubic centimetre, around the same as Earth and implying a rocky but iron-poor composition. Lacedelli 2020, on the other hand, found a mass of only 1.59 Earths and a density of 3.0 grams per cubic centimetre, abnormally low for a planet of its size and suggesting a composition made of 50% or more of water. Even their higher mass estimate of 1.83 Earths is consistent with a water world. With an insolation 5,100 times greater than Earth, TOI-561 b should have lost its gaseous layer and have little volatiles, so the authors believe if the planet has a significant amount of water, it has been evaporated into a puffy steam atmosphere that makes the planet seem larger, less dense, and more water-rich. If it is an extremely water-rich world, TOI-561 b would prove formation scenarios about Super-Earths forming beyond the "Snow Line" and migrating inwards.
