How Can You Spot Exoplanets?
With the discovery of an exoplanet, Mayor and Quloz have brought exoplanets to mainstream astronomy. Now people are closer to the fact that our solar system is not the only cosmic body in the solar system, and there are plenty of other planets and stars which accompany us. It is quite easy to spot the existence of an exoplanet. One of the common ways to look for exoplanets is to search for wobbly stars in the night sky. A star that is host to one or two planets will not orbit perfectly on its axis due to the gravitational tug from the planet.
This irregular movement/orbiting looks like wobbling from a distance, and we can know that the star has planet/s orbiting around it. This is one of the proven methods of finding the existence of exoplanets as hundreds and thousands of planets have been already found through this method. However, only massive planets like Jupiter can be discovered through this method as it is quite challenging to monitor the wobble of small planets like the Earth. Next time, when you spot the stars in the night sky twinkling in an irregular, you can confirm that the star must be hosting an exoplanet.