Basics
What is an Exoplanet
An exoplanet is a planet located outside of our Solar System. The study of exoplanets is crucial, especially in finding planets similar to Earth that might host life.
To do that, many methods are used, the most common among them being the transit method (one of the most understandable for those not without much knowledge on the subject). Upon that we base our method.
Key Concept
The idea is simple, analyzing data we can easily define the periodic dimming of a star’s brightness, caused by an exoplanet passing between earth and the star.
From the resulting graph (as the GIF shows), we can calculate different characteristics of the exoplanet, such as its radius and the semimajor axis (information on its trajectory)!!
This graph is called a light curve and to extract a graph like this you need to follow our guidelines.
If a periodicity is found, as in the graph shown above, it might suggest the existence of an exoplanet. So feel free to contact us.