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Worldly wobbles

The world of exoplanets

In the past 20 years, over 1800 planets have been discovered orbiting distant stars. This article sets out the challenges in detecting such objects and explains how they can be studied

The terms in bold link to topics in the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA A-level specifications, as well as the IB, Pre-U and SQA exam specifications.

Properties of exoplanets can be deduced using equations of circular motion and gravitation together with observations of the Doppler effect in the spectra of distant stars and measurements of dips in radiation during planetary transits.

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