Researchers at Penn State are actively in search for planets outside of our solar system. In 1991 Alex Wolszczan of Penn State University discovered the first planet ever found outside our solar system. From there we have begun finding planets elsewhere in our universe.

Finding planets is done one of three main ways:

• Radial Velocity Method - determines things about the planet from the wobble of the parent star

• Transit Method - done by measuring the dimming of a star as a planatary mass passes infront of it
• Doppler Radial Velocity - finds planets by blocking the light from the surrounding stars and looking for the planets this way

Examples of these are found here at NASA's Planet Quest.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Find Out More

• Penn State University Astrobiology Research Center (PSARC)

• NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI)
• Star Formation, Brown Dwarfs and Planet Formation

Recent Developments

• 7 February 2005 - Penn State's Alex Wolszczan discovered the smallest planet yet detected outside our own solar system. Read the Article

• 10 January 2005 - John Debes, a graduate student at Penn State; Steinn Sigurdsson, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University; Bruce Woodgate, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and their collaborators found two candidate planets in its survey of 20 dead stars--white dwarfs at distances between 24 and 220 lightyears--with three telescopes. Read the Article