  Exoplanets, or planets outside our own solar system, have long been of
interest to astronomers; however, only in the past two decades have scientists
had the technology to characterize and study planets so far away from us. With
advanced telescopes and spectrometers, astronomers are discovering more
exoplanets every year. The two most prolific methods for detecting exoplanets,
radial velocity, which measures the wobble of an exoplanet's parent star, and
transit, which detects the passage of a planet in front of its star, are
responsible for the discovery of the vast majority of exoplanets we know about
so far. Other methods such as direct imaging, timing, and gravitational
microlensing are less applicable but can sometimes yield accurate data to
confirm planets found by radial velocity or transit photometry. Astronomers
will continue to find large numbers of new exoplanets in the near future, but
it will become increasingly harder to do so after all the planets close to our
solar system are discovered.
