By: Max Alexander

 SAN JOSE, CALIF.— So far in 2022, seven exoplanets were found by different satellites, and some are potentially habitable. The planets all circle around their own unique stars, and all these 3 have stars that produce heat. 

Exoplanets are planets that lay outside of our solar system. They all have to orbit stars. A method that astronomers use to find exoplanets is to wait when they overlap with a planet. The exoplanets are so far away that they have to wait for the stars to get dimmer. Six out of ten students at Silver Creek think that we’ll be able to find life/inhabit an exoplanet in the future.

OGLE-2018-BLG-0383L b, HD 69123 b and LHS 1678 b are the three exoplanets that stand out the most. All three planets have unique features, with one of them being terrestrial, and possibly able to support life outside of Earth.

LHS 1678 b is the aforementioned habitable exoplanet, as it does have similar characteristics to Earth. OGLE-2018-BLG-0383L b is one of the further exoplanets from Earth, at a whopping 25117 light-years away from our planet. HD 69123 b is an unusually large planet, at the mass of 3.04 Jupiters.

HD 69123 b isn’t a habitable exoplanet, but it is unique. The planet is mainly composed of gas, and 3x the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Since you can fit 1,300 Earths in Jupiter, that means you can fit 3942 of the Earth in HD 69123 b.

LHS 1678 b is the most similar exoplanet to Earth. Some similarities include size, atmospheres and terrain. This could lead to more and more possibilities in the past. 

Since OGLE-2018-BLG-0383L b is 25117 lightyears away from Earth which makes it practically impossible to find life there. It is also the 5th largest exoplanet people on Earth have ever found.

Data: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/discovery/exoplanet-catalog/