The classic childhood picture book turned game, Where’s Waldo? Surely most of us have seen this book in a waiting room at least once in our lives- and have attempted, successfully or not to find Waldo among the distracting background. Well, today astronomers are in a living version of the game, only they’re looking at many exoplanets in the search for life.
So what is an exoplanet? Well, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a definition for a planet, but that only applies to objects within our solar system. And as far as exoplanets go, they only have a “working definition” that was last modified in 2003-not that it really matter because much like “planet” the definition is heavily debated. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be referring to planets that match the IAU definition for our solar system, but are orbiting stars that are not our Sun.
Back in October of 1995, the first exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star was found! That exoplanet being 51 Pegasi b which orbits the main sequence star 51 Pegasi in just 4 days, not only that, but it’s the size of Jupiter!
But really, the reason I chose this topic is because I wanted to share this really cool video I found on tumblr (cause I follow a lot of star stuff). It fits in really well with the topics we’ve been discussing in class! Enjoy!
Further Reading:
NASA Article on History of Discovery of Exoplanets
Wikipedia Article on Exoplanets
