These are lists of exoplanets. As of 14 March 2024, there are 5,599 confirmed exoplanets in 4,158 planetary systems, with 947 systems having more than one planet.[1] Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope. There are an additional 1,983 potential exoplanets from Kepler's first mission yet to be confirmed, as well as 977 from its "Second Light" mission and 4,612 from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission.[2]
For yearly lists on physical, orbital, and other properties, as well as on discovery circumstances and other aspects, see § Specific exoplanet lists.
The convention for naming exoplanets is an extension of the system used for designating multiple-star systems as adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). For exoplanets orbiting a single star, the IAU designation is formed by taking the designated or proper name of its parent star, and adding a lower case letter.[3] Letters are given in order of each planet's discovery around the parent star, so that the first planet discovered in a system is designated "b" (the parent star is considered "a") and later planets are given subsequent letters. If several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size. A provisional IAU-sanctioned standard exists to accommodate the designation of circumbinary planets. A limited number of exoplanets have IAU-sanctioned proper names. Other naming systems exist.
Planets are extremely faint compared to their parent stars. For example, a Sun-like star is about a billion times brighter than the reflected light from any exoplanet orbiting it. It is difficult to detect such a faint light source, and furthermore, the parent star causes a glare that tends to wash it out. It is necessary to block the light from the parent star to reduce the glare while leaving the light from the planet detectable; doing so is a major technical challenge which requires extreme optothermal stability.[4] All exoplanets that have been directly imaged are both large (more massive than Jupiter) and widely separated from their parent stars.
Specially designed direct-imaging instruments such as Gemini Planet Imager, VLT-SPHERE, and SCExAO will image dozens of gas giants, but the vast majority of known extrasolar planets have only been detected through indirect methods.