Searching for Exoplanets
For millennia, humanity gazed upward, wondering if we were alone. Today, we know the universe teems with planets. The Kepler Space Telescope revolutionized our understanding, proving that there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The search for exoplanets utilizes exquisite methods of observation, primary among them the transit method—detecting the microscopic dimming of a star as a planet passes across its face.
The Habitable Zone
Astronomers focus their lenses on the "Goldilocks Zone"—the orbital region around a star where conditions are just right for liquid water to exist on a planetary surface. The TRAPPIST-1 system, located 39 light-years away, hosts seven Earth-sized planets, with at least three residing firmly within this habitable boundary.
Galactic Architecture
These distant worlds reside within our Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy spanning 100,000 light-years. Yet our galaxy is but a single drop in the cosmic ocean. Beyond the local group lies the Virgo Supercluster, and beyond that, Laniakea. Galaxies coalesce along dark matter filaments, forming a web-like structure across the expanding universe.
Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope are currently peering back in time to view the very first galaxies forming in the primordial universe, reshaping our understanding of galactic evolution.