Planet Search Is Not Easy! Astronomers Tell Us How They Discovered Almost 5,000 New Exoplanets

When astronomers headed off to look for planets around other stars also known as exoplanets, they knew it wouldn't be easy.

However, as specified in a Vox report, because of "tiny wobbles and faint twinkles," these space scientists found almost 5,000 new worlds.

Planet Pluto was initially found in 1930, which this report describes as a "speck on a photographic place." It was the farthest world humans have ever spotted.

Decades after, even NASA's powerful Hubble Space Telescope found it quite difficult to get a good view of the dwarf planet. Its image of Pluto is only a "sickly yellow smudge."

A Need to Work with the Star

The Earth's nearest neighbor, a tiny red dwarf called "Proxima Centauri," is 7,000 times distant from this planet compared to Pluto. Any planet in orbit around it would possibly get lost in the shimmer of bright starlight.

According to astrophysicist Adam Frank, trying to see a planet akin to Earth across stellar distances, would be like "looking from New York City to AT&T Park in San Francisco," the location where Giants are playing, and producing a firefly next to a stadium spotlight.

Meanwhile, Sara Seager, an MIT planet-hunting astrophysicist said, to identify or examine an exoplanet, there is a need to work with the star.

Astronomers began monitoring stars for small changes that could suggest the existence of one or more planets. Early initiatives focused on the quest for a wobble.

Discovery of 51 Pegasi b

The pull of gravity of a planet is causing a star to revolve its mutual center of gravity and from the vantage point, the star appears to swing back and forth.

In the mid-1990s, space reports said, a Swiss team was able to pick up the signature of only such a wobble in the starlight coming from a yellow dwarf in the Pegasus constellation. They had discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first-ever exoplanet surrounding a sun-like star, which is detailed in the Nature journal.

In the next few decades, astrophysicists enhanced an entire range of planet-hunting tools. Specifically, they learned to spot the manner planets can change their stars' shape, how the gravity of a plane can bend light and the periodic drop in brightness when a particular planet is passing between its stars and Earth.

5,000 Exoplanets Identified

Telescopes have turned more accurate, not to mention powerful. More so, computers have become more efficient at sifting filtering out signals from noise. To date, astronomers are closing in on 5,000 identified exoplanets.

Five decades ago, they didn't have any idea about what percentage of stars had planets. A typical educated guess was 20 percent although, for all those in the field knew, it could have been none or zero.

Nevertheless, based on what has been seen since, it appears probable that each star has at least a single planetary companion.

But based on what we've seen since, it seems possible that every star has at least one planetary companion.

Report about finding the planet is shown on Vox's YouTube video below:

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