What is an Exoplanet? An exoplanet is any planet beyond our Solar System. Most planets orbit their own star, but some free floating planets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center, not bound to a center star system. In just the small portion of the Milky Way galaxy searched, we have discovered thousands of exoplanets, they have gathered there are more planets in our galaxy than stars. Direct imaging is how we photograph our home systems planets, but only a few exoplanets have been directly imaged. These exoplanets are mostly discovered through a few indirect methods, such as measuring the dimming of a star as the planet passes through itβs line of vision from the ground, and orbital telescopes. This method is called the transit method, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered using this method. Another method includes gravitational lensing, or the βwobble methodβ. When a planet orbits a star it causes the star to have an off center orbit, causing a βwobbleβ like illusion from far away. Only large, far away from their star, giant Jupiter like planets can be detected this way, and so far has found hundreds of exoplanets. Thanks to NASAβs Kepler mission we have learned much about the other planets in our galaxy. Source
Above imaged is the world of HD 189733 b. With winds that blow up to 5,400 mph, 7x the speed of sound, these possible silicate laced clouds would rip any human apart like shards of glass. Discovered through Hubbleβs Space Telescope in 2005 by measuring the dimming of itβs sun, a K-type star, as it passed by. Source Image - ESO/M. Kornmesser