Question

1. What are exoplanets?

2. How many (roughly) have been discovered to date?

3. Most exoplanets have been called “hot, speedy Jupiters”. Why?

4. What two methods have been used to find most of the exoplanets detected to date?

    What space satellite was designed to do this detection work very exactly?

Answer 1

1. Exoplanets are planets beyond our own solar system.

2. Approximately 3700 exoplanets have been discovered to date.

3. Hot jupiters are a class of gas giant exoplanets that are inferred to be physically similar to Jupiter. These class of exoplanets have very short orbital periods and hence are called "hot, speedy Jupiters". Also these class of exoplanets are the easiest to detect via the radial-velocity method and this is why most of the exoplanets are called "hot, speedy Jupiters".

4. Methods used to find most of the exoplanets detected to date are:

• Radial Velocity method
• Transit Photometry

Kepler Space Telescope was designed to do this detection work very exactly.