Best Exoplanets

The Kepler Space Telescope was a NASA observatory launched in 2009. It monitored over 150,000 stars for dips in brightness caused by planets passing in front of them – a technique called the transit method. This allowed scientists to identify and characterize numerous exoplanets, particularly those...

William Borucki is a prominent astronomer recognized for his leadership of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The Kepler mission, launched in 2009, utilized the transit method to discover thousands of exoplanets orbiting distant stars. This work significantly advanced our understanding of planetary syst...

Michaël Gillon is a Belgian astronomer at the University of Liège who led the research team that discovered seven Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, announced in February 2017. The discovery was made using the TRAPPIST telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile, sup...

David Charbonneau is a modern Canadian astronomer specializing in the study of exoplanets. His research focuses on detecting and characterizing planetary atmospheres using the transit method – observing slight dips in starlight as planets pass between us and their stars. He achieved significant reco...

R. Paul Butler is an American astronomer known for developing highly precise radial-velocity methods used to detect planets outside the Solar System. Working with collaborators including Geoffrey Marcy, he contributed to the discovery and characterization of numerous exoplanets by measuring the smal...

Natalie Batalha is an astronomer specializing in the study of exoplanets. Her leadership of the Kepler mission’s science team resulted in the discovery of numerous potential planets orbiting distant stars. This work significantly advanced our understanding of planetary systems beyond our own and is...

Julianne Dalcanton is an American astronomer and a past president of the AAS, recognized for her extensive research on galaxy formation and her leadership of the Hubble ANGST survey.

Debra Fischer is a modern astronomer specializing in the detection of exoplanets. Her research utilizes radial velocity measurements to identify subtle wobbles in stars caused by orbiting planets. She is particularly notable for her contributions to precision spectrograph development and its applica...

Anne-Marie Lagrange is a French astrophysicist who led the 2010 direct confirmation of Beta Pictoris b, a giant exoplanet orbiting a young nearby star.

Sara Seager is a Canadian-American astrophysicist and planetary scientist whose research focuses on planets beyond the Solar System. She has developed methods for interpreting exoplanet atmospheres, including how gases revealed through spectra might indicate planetary conditions or possible biologic...

Ignas Snellen is a Dutch astronomer whose research focuses on exoplanets and the characterization of their atmospheres. He is associated with Leiden University and is known for applying high-resolution spectroscopy to separate faint planetary signals from the much stronger light of host stars. His w...

Gordon Walker was a Canadian astronomer and professor at the University of British Columbia whose pioneering work significantly advanced the detection of extrasolar planets. During the 1980s, he utilized precision radial-velocity techniques to measure the minute gravitational wobbles of distant star...

Lisa Kaltenegger is an Austrian astronomer and astrophysicist specializing in the study of exoplanets and habitability. She serves as the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, a research center established in 2014 to focus on the search for habitable worlds and life in...

Smadar Naoz is an Israeli-American astrophysicist and professor at UCLA who specializes in stellar dynamics and exoplanetary science. Her research focuses on the orbital evolution of planetary systems, particularly the dynamics that occur during planet formation and the effects of stellar evolution...

Victoria Meadows is an American astronomer and astrobiologist who serves as a professor at the University of Washington. She is the principal investigator for NASA's Virtual Planetary Laboratory, a research team established in 2001 as part of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Her research focuses on...

Suzanne Aigrain is an Oxford professor of astrophysics who studies exoplanets and stellar activity and pioneered Gaussian-process regression for exoplanet data.

Guillem Anglada-Escudé is a Spanish astronomer and astrophysicist best known for leading the 2016 discovery of Proxima b, an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. This significant finding was achieved through the Pale Red Dot observational campaign. Prior to t...

Dimitar Sasselov is a Bulgarian-American astronomer and a professor at Harvard University. He serves as the director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, an interdisciplinary research program exploring the physical and chemical processes that lead to life. Sasselov is widely recognized for his...

Bruce Campbell is a Canadian astronomer recognized for his foundational contributions to the radial-velocity method of detecting extrasolar planets. Working with colleagues Gordon Walker and Stephenson Yang in the 1980s and 1990s, he developed sensitive Doppler spectroscopy techniques to measure the...

Andrew Howard is an American astronomer whose research focuses on exoplanet demographics and the frequency of planets around Sun-like stars. He has conducted radial-velocity and transit surveys that helped demonstrate small, rocky planets are abundant in the Milky Way. His work involves using high-p...

Christian Marois is a Canadian astronomer known for developing observational and image-processing methods for detecting exoplanets close to bright stars. He led the team that directly imaged a planetary system around the star HR 8799, initially reporting three planets in 2008 and a fourth in 2010. H...

Nikku Madhusudhan is an Indian-born astrophysicist whose research focuses on exoplanets, particularly the composition, climate, and atmospheric chemistry of worlds outside the Solar System. He is associated with the University of Cambridge and has worked on methods for interpreting spectroscopic obs...

Geoffrey Marcy is an American astronomer who became prominent for pioneering the detection of exoplanets using the radial velocity or Doppler spectroscopy method. During his career as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he and his team discovered dozens of the earliest known extra...

Aleksander Wolszczan is a prominent Polish astronomer recognized for his groundbreaking work in radio astronomy and the discovery of extrasolar planets. In 1992, working alongside astronomer Dale Frail, he reported the detection of the first confirmed exoplanets orbiting the millisecond pulsar PSR B...

Paul Butler is an American astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. He specializes in the detection of extrasolar planets using high-precision radial velocity spectroscopy. By co-developing advanced optical spectrographs and analysis techniques in the...

Jason Wright is an American astronomer and astrophysicist known for his research in exoplanets, stellar activity, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). He is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University and the director of the Penn State Extraterrestr...

Eduardo Martin is a Spanish astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands recognized for his extensive research on the properties and formation of brown dwarfs.

Caleb Scharf is an English astronomer who directs the Columbia Astrobiology Center and is prominent for his extensive research on exoplanets and black holes.

Michel Mayor is a Swiss astronomer renowned for his pioneering work in exoplanet research. His collaboration with Didier Queloz led to the detection of 51 Pegasi b, the first planet found orbiting a star similar to our Sun. This discovery significantly advanced observational planetary science and ea...