The image above is special for one thing. It shows us the perspective. All what people have know for milenia, their knowledge and culture, it is all just a blue dot it the space, visible only from a very small part of the universe.

What lies behind the safe protection of our atmosphere (and magnetosphere) is still pretty unknown to us. Sure, we have studied our closest neighbourhood, we have walked on the Moon surface and landed on several other planets, moons and even asteroids and comets. But it’s all just our Solar System. We assumed other planetary systems may be similar. But as we discovered more and more extrasolar planets, we realized they are more diverse than we thought.

The first discovered planets were orbiting a pulsar – death star. We still don’t know how they formed there. The first planet discovered orbiting a Sun-like star was a gas giant. That alone would not surprise us, but this one is orbiting its parent star on the orbit so close, that it it takes only 4.2 days to finish one orbit. This type of planets was later named Hot Jupiters and since 1995, when it was discovered, we know there are many more like it.

The discoveries made in the field of exoplanet research changed our perspective on the universe – diversity of the planetary systems, their formation and evolution – and the possibility of extraterrestrial life in it. And we are still only at the beginning!

If you want to know more about fascinating field of exoplanetary research, you can dive into this topic at my web pages. You will find here interesting facts about exoplanets, new discoveries explained and also some info about my current work at Trinity.