Extrasolar planets are of particular interest to me, personally - this was my area of research in graduate school. In fact, I was fortunate to be part of a team that actually discovered a new planet orbiting a distant star! Watch this video describing My Story of Discovering an Exoplanet.
Read my brief article The Day I Discovered… for an honest reflection on my experience making these discoveries.
We’ve previously learned about the formation of solar systems and protoplanetary disks. Read 21.3 Evidence That Planets Form around Other Stars to review the observational evidence we’ve encountered so far in the class.