Another surprise is the existence of whole classes of exoplanets that we simply don’t have in our solar system: planets with masses between the mass of Earth and Neptune, and planets that are several times more massive than Jupiter.
Such systems do exist in large numbers, but many exoplanets and planetary systems are very different from those in our solar system.
Discuss the kinds of planetary systems we are finding around other starsīefore the discovery of exoplanets, most astronomers expected that other planetary systems would be much like our own-planets following roughly circular orbits, with the most massive planets several AU from their parent star. Identify which kind of exoplanets appear to be the most common in the Galaxy. Explain what we have learned from our discovery of exoplanets. By the end of this section, you will be able to: