Supervisor: Mia Sloth Lundkvist

Humanity has been gazing up at the stars wondering about our place in the universe, and wondering if there are other planets, than the ones in our solar system, for hundreds if not thousands of years. Nowadays we have found and confirmed over 5000 planets of all sizes, some were surprising, other weren’t. But how did we get here?

In this student colloquium I will go over a brief history of our hunt for exoplanets. Along with this brief history I will give a short introduction to some of the most significant finds and the methods used to discover them, from the first planets to the most prolific methods for exoplanet detection.
I will end off by talking a bit about what we have found out thus far, as well as what is in store for the future. Because in order to fully appreciate where we are now, and where we are going, we have to understand where, we have come from.