AS101 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Stephen Hawking, Michel Mayor, Gamma Cephei
Document Summary
Lesson nine is totally devoted to a consideration of other planetary systems. This is a very current and hot topic among astronomers. Here we will describe the methods astronomers use to find planets around other stars, what they have found to date and what these discoveries tell us about our solar system as well as others. Now that we seem to have a good understanding of how our own solar system formed it seems reasonable to wonder if other solar systems exist around other stars. After all there are only about 100 billion stars in our own galaxy and only another 100 billion galaxies! We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet. One of the more interesting developments of the past 15 years has been the discovery of the existence of planets outside our own solar system.
