Planets around other stars — a field that did not exist before 1992.
9 topics · 8 curated works
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Detection of Planetary Transits Across a Sun-like Star
Charbonneau, Brown, Latham & Mayor · 2000
Reports the first observed dimming of starlight as a known exoplanet crossed its star, proving transits could measure a planet's radius directly…
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Primary sources and full treatments.
A Planetary System around the Millisecond Pulsar PSR1257+12
Wolszczan & Frail · 1992
Uses the extreme timing precision of a millisecond pulsar's pulses to detect two small planet-sized bodies orbiting it, the first confirmed planets…
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8 works
Charbonneau, Brown, Latham & Mayor
Reports the first observed dimming of starlight as a known exoplanet crossed its star, proving transits could measure a planet's radius directly rather than just its mass.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Winn & Fabrycky
Surveys what Kepler's multi-planet systems reveal about how planets are arranged around their stars, and argues the solar system's own layout is not the galactic default.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Wolszczan & Frail
Uses the extreme timing precision of a millisecond pulsar's pulses to detect two small planet-sized bodies orbiting it, the first confirmed planets found outside the solar system.
Kasting, Whitmire & Reynolds
Models where liquid water can persist on a planet's surface as a function of its star's brightness, giving the habitable zone concept a quantitative, checkable definition.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Mayor & Queloz
Detects a periodic wobble in the spectrum of an ordinary Sun-like star and attributes it to an orbiting giant planet, the first exoplanet found around a normal star.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Guillot, Burrows, Hubbard, Lunine & Saumon
Models why a giant planet parked a few million kilometres from its star should be puffed up far larger than Jupiter, explaining the inflated radii later measured in transiting hot Jupiters.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Charbonneau, Brown, Noyes & Gilliland
Detects sodium absorption in a transiting exoplanet's atmosphere, establishing that transits let observers probe the chemistry of worlds they cannot resolve.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Howard et al.
Uses Kepler's transit counts to show that small, close-in planets between Earth and Neptune in size are the most common kind of planet, not the rarity solar-system intuition suggests.
link checked 17 Sept 2026