What is an exoplanet?
April 22, 2021 at 12:07 pm
Exoplanets are planets orbiting distant stars beyond our Solar System, and today astronomers calculate that for every star we can see in the night sky, there is on average at least one exoplanet in orbit around it.
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The concept of exoplanets is hardly new: as far back as 1584, Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno suggested space was filled by “an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own”. An illustration depicting the variety of exoplanets discovered so far. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Lizbeth B. De La Torre
Over the past century, numerous authors, TV directors and film producers set their stories on planets beyond our own Solar System.