Types of Exoplanets

This is a list of exoplanets.As of 15 February 2018 there are 3,730 confirmed exoplanets. The majority of these planets were discovered by the Kepler spacecraft. In addition to the confirmed exoplanets, there are 4496 potential exoplanets from its first mission, and 480 from its "Second Light" mission.

Pulsar Timing is the method that was used in 1992 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail to detect the first confirmed exoplanets. These exoplanets orbit a pulsar, which is a rapidly rotating neutron star. A neutron star is the extremely dense remnant of a star that exploded as a supernova.

The radial velocity method, also known as Doppler spectroscopy, is the most effective method for locating extrasolar planets with existing technology. Though other approaches hold great promise for the future, the vast majority of Exoplanets discovered so far were detected by this method.

No, not the weekend beverage of choice, but the relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulations algorithm. This new way of finding exoplanets was developed by Professor Tsevi Mazeh and his student, Simchon Faigler, at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and it has been used for the first time to find a distant exoplanet, Kepler-76b, informally named Einstein’s planet.

A new method of detecting alien worlds is full of awesome, as it combines Einstein’s Theory of Relativity along with BEER. No, not the weekend beverage of choice, but the relativistic BEaming, Ellipsoidal, and Reflection/emission modulations algorithm.

Transit photometry is currently the most effective and sensitive method for detecting extrasolar planets, particularly from an onservatory in space. The Kepler mission, launched in March of 2009, uses photometry to search for extrasolar planets from space.

Transit-timing variation is a method for detecting exoplanets by observing variations in the timing of a transit. This provides an extremely sensitive method capable of detecting additional planets in the system with masses potentially as small as that of Earth.

Variable star timing Like pulsars, some other types of pulsating variable stars are regular enough that radial velocity could be determined purely photometrically from the Doppler shift of the pulsation frequency, without needing spectroscopy.