Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, fewer than 5% of the extrasolar planets known as of November 2011 have been observed directly.
Instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar planets. At the present time, several different indirect methods have yielded success.
Famous quotes containing the words methods of, methods, detecting and/or planets:
“If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They’d be inexpensive, too.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“All men are equally proud. The only difference is that not all take the same methods of showing it.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“In our Mechanics’ Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter’s planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,—rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)