exoplanet

So far, only a handful of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, have had their pictures taken directly.

One of the main goals of planet hunting is to find exoplanets that have the characteristics of Earth and may consequently contain life.

More than 500 exoplanets have been discovered since then, yet it's not clear if even one of them might be habitable.

Astronomers may have to consider the whole family of exoplanets in a system before determining if one is habitable or not.

It would be able to map the magnetic fields of stars and exoplanets (planets that circle stars outside the solar system).

Most of these extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, have been found using two different strategies.

When images showing three planets orbiting this star were obtained in 2008, it was the first time exoplanets had been directly observed.

The number of confirmed exoplanets could rise even more dramatically if some of the candidates host multiple planets.

In 2008, astronomers published the first direct images of exoplanets: tiny pinpricks of light close to a nearby star.

Finding these planets, known as exoplanets since they are located outside of our solar system, is difficult work.

By 2110 we will have mapped the surfaces of the nearest exoplanets to see oceans, storms, continents, and volcanoes.

The exoplanets found so far, however, can have far more eccentric orbits, moving in close and then far from their stars.

Astronomy is complicated enough as it is, so you might wonder why astronomers give exoplanets such confusing names.

Experts report that there are already more than 700 exoplanets discovered, but only a few are in the habitable zone.

Planet hunters have so far netted nearly 500 so-called "exoplanets" outside our Solar System using various astronomical techniques.

The discoveries bring the total number of known extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, to 645.

The problem is that most of the exoplanets detected to date, being gas giants, are too close to their stars to have been born there.

He thinks exoplanets are pulled towards the star by the dust and that when the dust runs out, the exoplanets stop moving.

So it only makes sense that our first interstellar journeys head toward exoplanets as close to Earth as possible.

How's this for an astronomical estimate? There are at least 50 billion exoplanets in our galaxy.

Once Kepler's full mission is under way, it will be used to highlight rocky exoplanets that are good candidates for life.

It has been designed to spot exoplanets bigger than twice the size of the Earth.

For one thing, it's about 20 light-years away, making it one of the closest exoplanets yet discovered [source: Lemonick].

In fact, HARPS alone has detected about two-thirds of all known exoplanets with masses less than that of Neptune.

It should be capable of detecting exoplanets smaller than the Earth.

Dr Mayor told the meeting that the French mission, CoRoT, has now found 80 exoplanets.

It could also help illuminate how giant, gaseous exoplanets often come to orbit their parent stars so closely.

Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds is organizing a conference in January 2012 to discuss planets and their dying stars.

Another version has it that large and small protoplanetary discs of the same mass may form exoplanets differently.

"So far, with exoplanets, nature has been more creative than we are. "

How does it work, then, that we have found hundreds of exoplanets orbiting other stars?

The finding demonstrates the diversity of exoplanets and the need for further study.

These eccentric orbits can lead exoplanets to extreme heat waves.

Astronomers have found nearly 500 exoplanets - or planets outside our own solar system.

Most of the more than 300 known exoplanets have been found based on indirect proof of their existence.

There's likely to be more than the 50 billion exoplanets Borucki describes.

Also, it needs more time to detect exoplanets that orbit further away from their stars.

But some exoplanets are wondrously Earth-like.

Where a perfect circle has an eccentricity value of zero, roughly half of exoplanets seen thus far have an eccentricity of 0. 25 or greater.

But these are the first images of planets outside the Solar System, or exoplanets as they are called.

But these are positions, the latest positions of exoplanets that we've mapped.

The three red dots, marked b, c and d, are exoplanets.

In order to study exoplanets, astronomers have had to be quite inventive.

With hundreds of exoplanets in the bag, astronomers are wondering whether it might be possible to find their moons too