Astronomy Stack Exchange
Astronomy Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [exoplanet]

Questions regarding planets that lie outside the Solar System.

516 questions
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What's the difference between an exoplanetary transit and eclipse?

This article states Their data contained eclipses for all 25 exoplanets, and transits for 17 of them. This page from NASA explains the difference between an eclipse and a transit: Like an eclipse, a transit occurs when one object appears to pass…
usernumber
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How close are we to having the technology to measure planetary obliquity for exoplanets?

As far as I can tell, we do not yet have the precision to even put reasonable bounds on an exoplanets obliquity, but wikipedia seems to indicate that this may be possible in the "near future." It seems like this would have to be accomplished by…
user674
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The battle over Gliese 581 and Gliese 667C?

In 2014, Robertson et al. made a case that stellar activity is masquerading as planets (here and here) for these well-known systems. In both cases, they claim that the only real planets discovered so far are planets "b" and "c". In 2015,…
Jack R. Woods
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Are there any Stars we know don't have planets?

We have been looking for planets around other stars for a while (see related https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1484 ) and we are finding lots of planets, some of them are Earth like According to an the answer at…
James Jenkins
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Sedna, VP113 and the likelihood of the PX/Tyche/Thelistos hypotheses

Crosslisted question from https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/131876/sedna-vp113-and-the-likelihood-of-the-px-tyche-thelistos-hypotheses The recent discoveries in exoplanetary science (specially those findings of planets orbiting far far…
riemannium
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Are stars near the ecliptic the only stars from which Earth would appear to transit the Sun?

The majority of exoplanets we have discovered have been found by the transit method, in which a planet passes in front of its parent star and by analyzing the light curve we can deduct its characteristics. Say there was intelligent life around a…
user177107
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Planetary system orientation & the search for exoplanets

A quick review of photographs of galaxies will reveal that not all galaxies are orientated in the same plane as the field of view from Earth. Some galaxies are parallel to our field of view and we see them side on. Others are perpendicular to our…
Fred
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Exoplanet naming conventions

I'm looking for any exoplanet nomenclature, official, semi-official, proposed, or just a good idea, beyond what can already be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet#Other_naming_systems Or via the obvious Google searches. This…
Vince Mulhollon
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How to calculate the temperature of an exoplanet?

I was given an exoplanet similar in size and distance to host star to our own earth. It's orbiting a star with luminosity six times our sun, the greenhouse coefficient 0.3, bond albedo 0.3. I would like to calculate the approximate surface…
Script Kitty
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How are planets detected from the pull their gravity exerts on their parent stars?

"The planets we have so far discovered orbiting other stars were found from the pull their gravity exerts on their parent stars, or from the light they block from their stars when they pass in front of them" I did not comprehend how they detected…
yh_2004
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Why 2014-2015-2016 were the years when the number of discovered exoplanets increased the most?

So, if we look into the cumulative number of exoplanets discovered by year, you can appreciate a huge rise in the number of discovered exoplanets in the years 2014 and 2016: Credit to NASA Exoplanet Archive Also, I don't know if it's by coincidence…
Carlos Vázquez Monzón
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Can we detect exoplanets with perpendicular plane of ecliptic?

If I understand correctly, all the current exoplanet search is based on planets transitioning the distant star. If the plane of ecliptic of that star happens to be perpendicular to line of sight from Earth to that star - or sufficiently inclined, so…
SF.
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How many earth-like planets do we know at this moment?

Well, the title says everything... How many earth-like planets have we discovered out there? Discard too big (made of gas), too cold, too hot, etc. Consider earth-like sun distance, size, temperature, the rocky ones...
Magno C
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How can we tell how many exoplanets a star has?

Part of this answer (discussing the moving center of mass of our solar system) explains that this movement is one way we know a star has planets: Bonus: We use this phenomenon to find planets outside the Solar System! If a distant star is observed…
KutuluMike
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Average number of exoplanets in a system

I was just wondering what is the normal amount of planets is in a star system, because in my mind 8 planets seems like a relatively large amount. So are we above average? Can we even see all the exoplanets in a star system? Also, do we know if belts…
stanley dodds
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