Explainer: How astronomers find exoplanets
Thursday, March 13, 2014 - 08:30
in Astronomy & Space
Astronomers didn't know, 20 years ago, whether planets existed around any stars other than the Sun. All that changed in 1995 with the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. And by the beginning of 2014, more than 1,000 exoplanets had been found. As a result, astronomers are now closer than ever to answering the question of whether life exists elsewhere in the universe.