{"id":795211,"date":"2025-04-11T02:37:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T07:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=795211"},"modified":"2025-04-11T02:37:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T07:37:05","slug":"how-scientists-find-distant-planets-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=795211","title":{"rendered":"how scientists find distant planets : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n An illustration of the GAIA telescope, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013. Using GAIA data, astronomers can observe a key factor in exoplanet discovery: planetary wiggles.
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An illustration of the GAIA telescope, launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2013. Using GAIA data, astronomers can observe a key factor in exoplanet discovery: planetary wiggles.<\/p>\n

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Dune. Star Wars. Alien. Science fiction movies love alien worlds, and so do we. But how do scientists find planets outside our solar system in real<\/em> life?<\/p>\n

Astronomers have found thousands of planets outside our solar system: planets with super-long elliptical orbits, giant planets with tiny orbits and planets that spin in the opposite direction of their stars. <\/p>\n

One of the methods astronomers use to detect these planets is looking at a nearby star’s behavior \u2013 and seeing if it wiggles! <\/p>\n

Why “wiggle”? <\/p>\n

Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So, when planets feel a gravitational pull towards their suns, they also exert a force on the much larger stars they orbit. Those planetary tugs make the stars wiggle in the sky.<\/p>\n