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Contents
- Introduction and guidance
- Introduction
- 1 What is a planet?
- 2 Stars and galaxies
- 3 The sky
- 4 This week’s quiz
- 5 Summary of Week 1
- Introduction
- 1 Terrestrial and giant planets
- 2 The scale of the Solar System: everything is big!
- 3 Gas giants and ice giants
- 4 Planet vital statistics
- 5 Simplifying the numbers
- 6 Gallery of planet portraits
- 7 This week’s quiz
- 8 Summary of Week 2
- Introduction
- 1 Exoplanet names
- 2 The first exoplanet: 51 Pegasi b
- 3 Wobbling stars
- 4 Measuring the movement of stars
- 5 The exoplanet collection
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary of Week 3
- Introduction
- 1 Transits in the Solar System
- 2 Size matters
- 3 Putting the ingredients together
- 4 This week’s quiz
- 5 Summary of Week 4
- Introduction
- 1 The first transiting planet – HD 209458 b
- 2 Hot Jupiter transits are easy to measure
- 3 The names of transiting planets
- 4 How to measure an exoplanet’s size and mass
- 5 Transits from space
- 6 Close-in planets
- 7 Density is key
- 8 This week’s quiz
- 9 Summary of Week 5
- Introduction
- 1 Learning about the whole Galaxy
- 2 How many planets?
- 3 The Milky Way variety pack
- 4 The light year
- 5 The habitable zone
- 6 Where are the aliens? The Drake equation
- 7 Kepler’s small planets
- 8 The search for Earth’s first cousins
- 9 This week’s quiz
- 10 Summary of Week 6
- Introduction
- 1 Spectra: how we learned what stars are made of
- 2 Atmospheres of planets and their climates
- 3 Measurements and uncertainty: why great distances are bad news
- 4 Special planets
- 5 This week’s quiz
- 6 Summary of Week 7
- Introduction
- 1 Welcome to the neighbourhood
- 2 The Pale Red Dot search: a planet around our closest neighbour?
- 3 The history of rocky planet formation
- 4 Prospects for extraterrestrial life
- 5 The future of exoplanet exploration
- 6 This week’s quiz
- 7 Summary of Week 8
- Where next?
- Tell us what you think
- Acknowledgements
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