Exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, are planets that orbit a star outside our solar system. Since the first confirmed discovery in the 1990s, thousands of these intriguing worlds have been identified, ranging from giant planets bigger than Jupiter to smaller, rocky planets reminiscent of Earth.
Scientists use a variety of methods to discover and study these distant planets, from measuring the dimming of a star when a planet transits in front of it to observing changes in the star's spectrum due to gravitational interactions with an orbiting planet.