Exoplanetary Science

Our exoplanet detection methods have their limits. Radial velocity studies work great in the inner regions of planetary systems, but become more challenging as we move away from the star. Direct imaging is the reverse — we’re most likely to see a distant planet if it’s both large and well separated from the primary. Clearly [...]

While transit and radial velocity methods get most of the press when it comes to finding exoplanets, gravitational microlensing offers an independent alternative. Here a star passes in front of a far more distant object, causing the light from the source to be gravitationally ‘bent’ by the intervening star. The useful thing for exoplanet work [...]

Just what does it take to make a habitable world? Keith Cooper is editor of Astronomy Now, the British monthly whose first editor was the fabled Patrick Moore. An accomplished writer on astronautics and astronomy as well as a Centauri Dreams regular, Keith has recently become editor of Principium, the newsletter of the Institute for [...]

The planetary system around Kepler-37, some 210 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, had its place in the media spotlight yesterday, although it will surely be a brief one. But it’s heartening to see the quickening interest in exoplanets that each new discovery brings. Will the interest continue? In the Apollo days, public [...]