What are Some Known Extrasolar Planets?
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet in a solar system other than our own. We’ve always supposed that they existed, but it wasn’t until 1992 that the presence of an extrasolar planet was definitively confirmed. Another discovery was made slightly earlier, in 1988, but it wouldn’t be confirmed until 2003. The 1992 discovery, which was by radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail, uncovered a planetary system around the fast-rotating pulsar PSR 1257+12. These unusual planets are thought to have either formed from the remnants of the supernova explosion that created the pulsar, or else be the rocky cores of gas giants whose atmospheres were stripped off by the supernova. Another major milestone in the astronomy of extrasolar planets came on 6 October 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva announced that they had discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting a main sequence (Sun-like star), 51 Pegasi, approximately 50 light-years away. The p
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet in a solar system other than our own. We’ve always supposed that they existed, but it wasn’t until 1992 that the presence of an extrasolar planet was definitively confirmed. Another discovery was made slightly earlier, in 1988, but it wouldn’t be confirmed until 2003. The 1992 discovery, which was by radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail, uncovered a planetary system around the fast-rotating pulsar PSR 1257+12. These unusual planets are thought to have either formed from the remnants of the supernova explosion that created the pulsar, or else be the rocky cores of gas giants whose atmospheres were stripped off by the supernova. Another major milestone in the astronomy of extrasolar planets came on 6 October 1995, when Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva announced that they had discovered an extrasolar planet orbiting a main sequence (Sun-like star), 51 Pegasi, approximately 50 light-years away. The p
