Exoplanet science is the most rapidly growing field in current astronomy, and over 500 exoplanets are now known. The IoA is involved in several projects to discover new exoplanets, using a variety of techniques.

Imaging

Project 1640 is involved in building an Integral Field Spectrograph for planet detection. Read more.

Microlensing & Astrometry

Microlensing relies on the detection of a tiny deviation to the regular microlensing event light curve caused by the presence of a planet orbiting the main lensing star. Read more.

Transit Studies

The IoA is currently involved in the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) which is a ground-based search for small planets around bright stars, based at the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert.

Members of the department also work with data from the revitalised Kepler mission (K2) and are developing and will be operating the Exoplanet Analysis System for the upcoming ESA PLATO2 mission.