On the night of 13 March 1781 William Herschel, working with a reflector he had built himself in his house at Bath, saw a star near H Geminorum that looked too large. He changed the eyepiece from a magnification of 227 to 460 and then 932, and the object grew where a star would not. He reported it to the Royal Society as a comet (Herschel 1781). Only the orbit computed over the following months made it a planet. Uranus had been recorded as a star before, more than once. What was new in 1781 was not the photons but the recognition.
That distinction runs through this appendix. A discovery has at least five dates: the exposure that first recorded the body, the moment someone recognised it, the announcement, the orbit or confirmation that secured it, and the publication. Pluto was on plates exposed on 23 and 29 January 1930, was recognised on 18 February and was announced on 13 March (Tombaugh 1946). Eris was in images from 21 October 2003 and was recognised on 5 January 2005, after a slower motion search was run on the same data (Brown et al. 2005). Hippocamp was found in 2013 in Hubble images taken years before. Where the sources give several dates, the tables below give them, and the year column uses the date the source treats as the discovery.
“First” also needs a qualifier. The first accepted exoplanets orbit a pulsar (1992), the first around a Sun-like star came in 1995, and an early radial-velocity companion of 1989 was interpreted by its own discoverers as a probable brown dwarf. Several claims in the tables were later withdrawn (the pulsar planet of PSR 1829−10, Barnard’s star, the IRAS “mystery” sources) and one withdrawn claim was later vindicated (Gamma Cephei). They are kept, marked as such, because the failures teach as much as the successes.
The appendix has two parts. The first is five charts built from catalogue snapshots and published search descriptions frozen on 16 October 2026, which show how far discovery has come in number, faintness, distance and search size. The second is the timeline itself, in five eras, each linked to the chapter that tells its story in full. The people named are the discoverers, analysts or team leaders the sources credit, not complete author lists. Solar System and exoplanet milestones sit in separate tables within each era so that the parallel histories can be read side by side: motion against the stars, the pull of an unseen mass, light removed by an intervening body, and a faint point separated from a bright one.
The shape of discovery in five charts
How many bodies are known
Each curve counts today’s catalogue members by the year they were discovered. It is not a record of what was known in each year, because later precoveries, identifications and reclassifications move objects between years and classes (MPC). With that caveat the curves show three distinct histories. Main-belt asteroids grew slowly through the era of visual and photographic searches, with a step of about 1,800 objects in 1960, the year the Palomar–Leiden Survey’s 130 Schmidt plates were taken (van Houten et al. 1970), and then rose by a factor of about 50 between 1990 and 2010 as CCD surveys came on line. Near-Earth asteroids followed the same electronic acceleration from a much smaller base. Trans-Neptunian objects sit at one, Pluto, from 1930 until 1992, then climb almost vertically.
| Discovered through | MPC TNO list | Main-belt asteroids (numbered + designation-year proxy) | MPC near-Earth asteroids |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | 2 | 17,618 | 229 |
| 2000 | 343 | 128,625 | 1,242 |
| 2010 | 1,204 | 714,157 | 7,570 |
| 2020 | 3,648 | 1,225,755 | 24,683 |
| 2025 | 4,108 | 1,406,689 | 40,187 |
| 16 Oct 2026 | 4,108 | 1,420,299 | 42,355 |
The table uses narrower definitions than the chart: the MPC’s TNO list alone (the chart adds the Centaur and scattered-disk list, cut at a > 30 au, which gives 5,932) and the MPC’s annual near-Earth table, which counts Atens, Apollos and Amors and totals 42,355 against CNEOS’s 42,806 near-Earth asteroids on the same day. The two services disagree by 451 objects, and Atiras (40 in CNEOS) do not explain the difference. Neither number is wrong; they are different products, and this appendix does not splice them (MPC, CNEOS). The full MPC orbit file held 1,574,504 records that day.
How faint
Ceres and Neptune were both about eighth magnitude when found (Piazzi 1801, Galle 1877). The faintest moving bodies found in 2026 are near magnitude 29, about 21 magnitudes or a factor of 10⁸ fainter. Two technologies did most of the work. Photography (Wolf in 1891, Tombaugh in 1930, Palomar–Leiden in 1960) took the limit from 13 to about 20. Electronic detectors and then digital tracking, which adds many short exposures along trial trajectories (see Chapter 17), took it from 20 to 29. The deepest points are all small pencil-beam fields: the 2003 Hubble ACS field covered 0.02 square degrees (Bernstein et al. 2004) and the 2026 JWST search 0.05 (Eduardo et al. 2026). Wide surveys stop several magnitudes brighter. The same 2003 Hubble images, searched again in 2026 with a fifteen-day orbit stack, yielded two new objects, the fainter at 29.17 (Napier et al. 2026). The two papers’ calibrations differ, so the 0.04 mag between their completeness depths is not the measure of the algorithmic gain.
How far
Distance at discovery is a different quantity from semimajor axis or aphelion. Sedna was 90.32 au from the Sun when its discovery paper was written, although its semimajor axis was estimated at about 480 au (Brown et al. 2004). Farfarout, the most distant body yet observed, was about 132 au away when its orbit was confirmed in 2021, yet its preliminary orbit brings it inside Neptune’s at perihelion (NOIRLab 2021). Because reflected flux at opposition falls roughly as the fourth power of distance, each step outward costs much more than the last: doubling the distance costs about three magnitudes. The chart shows only records the sources verify, starting with Sedna, and stops at the last measured one; it does not extend Farfarout’s 2021 value to the present.
Exoplanets, method by method
The NASA Exoplanet Archive listed 6,451 confirmed planets on 16 October 2026. By discovery method: transit 4,785, radial velocity 1,204, microlensing 292, imaging 98, transit-timing variations 29, eclipse-timing variations 17, orbital brightness modulation 9, pulsar timing 8, astrometry 6, pulsation timing 2 and disk kinematics 1 (NASA Exoplanet Archive). Each planet has one discovery method, the one that first identified it; HD 209458 b, whose transits were the first observed, is counted under radial velocity because the velocity orbit came first. Radial velocity led every year until 2009 and transits every year since 2010, in bursts that follow catalogue validation papers rather than telescope time. Microlensing yields rose after 2015, when the Korean three-telescope network KMTNet began operating. Imaging and the timing methods remain at a few planets a year. The census and its selection effects are the subject of Chapter 35.
How big the searches have become
A blind search for a faint moving body tests many hypotheses about where it is and how it moves. Harrington’s 1988 search for Planet X fitted 344,736 trial planets to the residuals of Uranus and Neptune (Harrington 1988). Image searches now test 10¹² to more than 10¹⁴ trajectories. The counts in the chart use different definitions and are not comparable as a leaderboard, but the order of magnitude is the point: since about 2004, searches have been limited by computation as much as by photons. The table gives the hardware the same searches report.
| Year | Search | Reported compute |
|---|---|---|
| 1960s | Palomar–Leiden orbit computation | about 900 orbits per hour on the NORC computer (van Houten et al. 1970) |
| 1990 | Spacewatch MODP, real-time moving-object detection | Solbourne workstation, three SPARC processors, 32 MB RAM (Rabinowitz 1991) |
| 2004 | HST ACS digital tracking, about 10¹⁴ trials | several CPU-years on 2.4 GHz Pentium 4s (Bernstein et al. 2004) |
| 2015 | WIYN digital tracking, 1.035 × 10¹⁵ vector-pixels | about 50 days on a 32-core desktop (Heinze et al. 2015) |
| 2019 | KBMOD kernel, 2.4 × 10¹¹ trajectories through 30 images | about 180 s on one GPU (Whidden et al. 2019) |
| 2022 | DES six-year catalogue linking, ≳10¹³ pairs | 15 to 20 million CPU-hours, authors’ estimate (Bernardinelli et al. 2022) |
| 2023 | DEEP VI KBMOD searches | median 576 s per CCD on an NVIDIA A40, about 282 h in total (Smotherman et al. 2023) |
| 2026 | heliostack, >10¹⁴ trajectories | a few hundred H200 GPU-hours plus a few thousand CPU-hours, under a day elapsed (Napier et al. 2026) |
These are accounting units, not equal amounts of useful work, and most discovery papers report no compute at all. Chapter 41 discusses what a fair comparison would need.
Reading the timeline
Each era has a short introduction and one or two tables. The year column gives the discovery or result date; where the image date and the recognition or announcement date differ, both are given. Method and instrument name the discovery instrument, not later follow-up, unless the follow-up was the point. The source is a primary paper where one was read, otherwise the official register: JPL’s satellite discovery list for moons, the Minor Planet Center’s discovery circumstances for asteroids, and NASA or the discovery team’s institution for some recent events. Moon and asteroid years follow those registers, which are curated records rather than independently checked observing logs. Entries marked claim, candidate or forecast are exactly that.
Before 1900: eye, chart and plate
The first era is told in Chapter 3. Almost every stage of a modern survey pipeline already appears in it: Herschel’s morphology test, Piazzi’s repeated astrometry, Gauss’s orbit from a short arc, Le Verrier’s inversion of perturbations, d’Arrest’s comparison of the sky with a printed chart, and Wolf’s photographic trails. So do the failures: Challis recorded Neptune twice in August 1846 but had not compared his observations, and Vulcan was a real anomaly attached to the wrong cause.
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | Mercury to Saturn | Naked eye | Unrecorded observers | Wandering lights known long before any idea of discovering a planet | NASA |
| 1610 | Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto | Refractor; repeated sketches of changing arrangement | Galileo Galilei; Simon Marius independently | A miniature planetary system around another body | JPL |
| 1655 | Titan | Refractor | Christiaan Huygens | A faint point that kept company with Saturn | JPL |
| 1671–1684 | Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Tethys and Dione (1684) | Paris Observatory long-focus refractors | Giovanni Domenico Cassini | Iapetus was visible far more on one side of Saturn than the other, an early lesson in selection by surface and phase | JPL |
| 1772 | Titius–Bode spacing rule promoted | Numerical rule, no force law | J. D. Titius; J. E. Bode | A search prior that put a missing planet at 2.8 au | Piazzi 1802 |
| 1781 Mar 13 | Uranus | Home-built reflector at Bath; magnifications 227, 460, 932 | William Herschel | First planet found with a telescope; reported as a comet, made a planet by its orbit | Herschel 1781 |
| 1787 | Titania and Oberon | Reflector | William Herschel | Moons of the new planet | JPL |
| 1789 | Enceladus and Mimas | Herschel’s forty-foot reflector | William Herschel | Faint companions found in the glare of the rings | Herschel 1790 |
| 1801 Jan 1 | Ceres | Palermo Circle, meridian transit astrometry | Giuseppe Piazzi | An eighth-magnitude “star” that moved between nights: the first asteroid | Piazzi 1801 |
| 1801 Oct–Dec 31 | Ceres recovered | Orbit from a 41-day, three-degree arc | C. F. Gauss; F. X. von Zach; H. W. Olbers | First recovery guided by an orbit computed from a short arc; first sighting 7 Dec, secure 31 Dec | Gauss 1809 |
| 1802–1807 | Pallas (1802 Mar 28), Juno (1804 Sep 1), Vesta (1807 Mar 29) | Visual searches and astrometry | H. W. Olbers; K. L. Harding | The single missing planet became a population | MPC |
| 1809 | Theoria motus | Orbit determination with least squares | C. F. Gauss | A general probabilistic framework, not a transcript of the 1801 calculation | Gauss 1809 |
| 1824 | Berlin Academy star charts proposed | Printed charts to a common depth | F. W. Bessel | The chart became part of the detector; one would find Neptune | Remchin & Schrimpf 2019 |
| 1845 Nov 5 – 1846 Aug 31 | Uranus’s residuals inverted for an outer planet | Perturbation theory; 33 reduced equations, 9 unknowns | Urbain Le Verrier; J. C. Adams independently | A planet located by its pull | Airy 1846 |
| 1845 Dec 8 | Astraea | Visual comparison with star fields | K. L. Hencke | First new asteroid in 38 years | MPC |
| 1846 Aug 4, 12 | Neptune recorded but not recognised | Cambridge Observatory search observations | James Challis | The data existed; the comparison was unfinished | Airy 1846 |
| 1846 Sep 23 | Neptune | Berlin refractor; Bremiker’s Hora XXI chart | J. G. Galle, H. L. d’Arrest | An eighth-magnitude object missing from the chart, 59′ in heliocentric longitude from the prediction | Galle 1877; Krajnović 2016 |
| 1846 Oct 10 | Triton | Reflector | William Lassell | Neptune’s large moon, weeks after the planet | NASA |
| 1848 | Hyperion | Harvard and Lassell telescopes | W. C. Bond, G. P. Bond; W. Lassell | Independent simultaneous discovery | JPL |
| 1851 | Ariel and Umbriel | Reflector | William Lassell | More Uranian moons | JPL |
| 1859 Mar 26 | Vulcan “transit” reported | Watch of the solar disk | Edmond Lescarbault; Le Verrier | A real anomaly in Mercury’s perihelion (38″ per century in Hind’s account) attached to a planet that was never secured | Hind 1876 |
| 1877 Mar | Logged null Vulcan searches | 8-inch refractor; recorded watch intervals | S. J. Perry; J. R. Capron | A null result excludes only what was watched | Perry 1877 |
| 1877 Aug | Phobos and Deimos | USNO 26-inch refractor at a favourable opposition | Asaph Hall | Relative astrometry near a bright, gibbous primary | Hall 1877 |
| 1878 Jul 29 | Eclipse “Vulcan” sightings | Visual search during totality | J. C. Watson; Lewis Swift | Disputed at once: known stars and pointing errors could explain them | Nature 1879 |
| 1884 Sep 29 | Ida | Vienna refractor | Johann Palisa | Its moon would wait 110 years | NASA |
| 1891 Dec 22 | Brucia | Star-tracked photograph; five-inch Kranz portrait lens | Max Wolf | First asteroid found photographically: motion became a trail on a stored image | Wolf 1895 |
| 1892–1895 | Photographic asteroid searching becomes routine | Six-inch Voigtländer lens; staggered paired two-hour plates | Max Wolf; Auguste Charlois | More than 70 deg² per plate for objects brighter than 12.6; 36 new among 135 objects recorded | Wolf 1895; Holden 1896 |
| 1892 Sep 9 | Amalthea | Lick refractor, visual | E. E. Barnard | About 13th magnitude beside Jupiter; last moon found by eye | Lick 1892 |
| 1895 | Unseen masses declined | Planetary tables | Simon Newcomb | Left Mercury’s residual unexplained rather than force it into a planet; relativity later accounted for it | Newcomb 1895 |
| 1898 Aug 13 | Eros | Photographic searches, Berlin and Nice | Gustav Witt; Auguste Charlois the same night | First near-Earth asteroid | NASA |
| 1898 Aug / 1899 | Phoebe | Arequipa plates by DeLisle Stewart; recognised by W. H. Pickering; announced by E. C. Pickering | W. H. Pickering | First moon found photographically, about magnitude 15.5; recording, recognition and announcement by different people at different times | Pickering 1899 |
1900–1991: photographs, computers and the first CCDs
The second era, told in Chapter 4, turned discovery into an information-processing task: cover the sky, repeat, suppress what is stationary, notice what moved. Lowell’s prediction financed the search but did not find Pluto; Charon’s mass ended the idea that Pluto was Lowell’s planet; and Standish showed in 1993 that the residuals that had motivated Planet X came from an outdated Neptune mass and catalogue errors (Chapter 7). Spacecraft added close-up moons. Spacewatch’s CCD and software closed the era by detecting moving objects while the data were still arriving. In the exoplanet table, the same decades produced the proposals and the cautionary claims that shaped the field after 1992.
Solar System and methods
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1904–1905 | Himalia, Elara | Lick photographic search | C. D. Perrine | Photography reaches Jupiter’s faint outer moons | JPL |
| 1906–1907 | Achilles (1906 Feb 22), Patroclus, Hektor | Heidelberg wide-field photography | Max Wolf; August Kopff; Carl Charlier (orbit) | First Jupiter Trojans: the Lagrange regions are populated | NASA |
| 1906 | Lowell’s Planet X search begins | Five-inch camera; plates superposed, later a Zeiss blink comparator | Percival Lowell; E. C. Slipher; K. P. Williams | About 250 plates; Pluto lay just beyond a plate edge | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1908–1951 | Pasiphae, Sinope, Lysithea, Carme, Ananke | Greenwich, Lick and Mount Wilson photography | P. J. Melotte; S. B. Nicholson | Jupiter’s irregular moons appear one at a time | JPL |
| 1915 | Lowell predicts Planet X | Residuals of Uranus | Percival Lowell | About 7 Earth masses at 43 au, magnitude 12–13 (via Tombaugh’s account) | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1919 Dec | Pickering’s prediction; Mount Wilson plates miss Pluto | Photography | W. H. Pickering | Pluto’s images fell outside the examined area or on emulsion defects | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1920 Oct 31 | Hidalgo | Bergedorf photography | Walter Baade | A comet-like orbit on an asteroid | MPC |
| 1929 | Purpose-built search telescope | 13-inch astrograph, 14×17-inch plates, about 12°×14°, to magnitude ~17 | Clyde Tombaugh; V. M. Slipher; A. L. Lowell | A survey instrument, not a general telescope | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1930 Feb 18 | Pluto recognised (plates 23, 29 Jan; announced 13 Mar) | Blink comparator; third plate to reject defects; opposition fields | Clyde Tombaugh | About two million stellar images examined before the find | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1930–1943 | The search continues | Same telescope | Clyde Tombaugh | Three-quarters of the sky, 90 million stellar images, no further planet | Tombaugh 1946 |
| 1932–1936 | Amor (1932 Mar 12), Apollo (1932 Apr 24), Adonis (1936 Feb 12) | Uccle and Heidelberg photography | Eugène Delporte; Karl Reinmuth | Earth-approaching classes named | MPC |
| 1946 | First radar echo from the Moon | Project Diana, US Army Signal Corps | — | Beginning of planetary radar | Virkki et al. 2023 |
| 1948–1949 | Miranda, Nereid | McDonald Observatory photography | G. P. Kuiper | Last classical moons of Uranus and Neptune before spacecraft | JPL |
| 1949 Jun 27 | Icarus | Palomar photography | Walter Baade | An extreme inner orbit | MPC |
| 1949 | Wilson–Harrington seen with a tail | Photography | — | Later catalogued as a near-Earth asteroid: the comet–asteroid line blurs | Chandler et al. 2024 |
| 1960 Sep–Oct | Palomar–Leiden Survey | 48-inch Schmidt, 130 plates to ~20.5; orbits on NORC | Tom Gehrels; C. J. van Houten; I. van Houten-Groeneveld; Paul Herget | More than 2,000 asteroids, 1,800 statistical orbits, and a measured completeness | van Houten et al. 1970 |
| 1965 | Mercury’s rotation measured | Arecibo delay–Doppler radar | G. Pettengill; R. Dyce | 59 ± 5 days, not synchronous | Nolan et al. 2026 |
| 1966 / 1980 | Janus | Ground-based Saturn observations; Voyager | Audouin Dollfus; later Daniel Pascu and others | A co-orbital pair confused identification for 14 years | JPL |
| 1968 Jun | First asteroid radar echoes, Icarus | Goldstone; Haystack | R. Goldstein; G. Pettengill | Radar reaches small bodies | Nolan et al. 2026 |
| 1974–1975 | Leda; Themisto seen then lost | Palomar photography | Charles Kowal; Elizabeth Roemer | Themisto would be recovered only in 2000 | JPL |
| 1977 Mar 10 | Rings of Uranus | Stellar occultation from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory | J. L. Elliot, E. Dunham, D. Mink | Rings found by the starlight they removed | Braga-Ribas et al. 2014 |
| 1977 Nov 1 | Chiron (plates 18–19 Oct) | Palomar 122-cm Schmidt; slow motion near opposition; precovery back to 1895 | Charles Kowal; W. Liller, B. Marsden (orbit) | First Centaur; the archive turned a short arc into an orbit | Kowal et al. 1979 |
| 1978 Jun 22 | Charon (announced 6 Jul) | USNO STARSCAN measurement of Flagstaff plates; elongated images | J. W. Christy; R. S. Harrington | System mass about 0.0017 Earth masses: Pluto could not be Lowell’s planet | Christy & Harrington 1978 |
| 1979 | Metis, Adrastea, Thebe | Voyager cameras | Voyager imaging team | Moons visible only from close up | JPL |
| 1980 | Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora; co-orbitals Helene, Telesto, Calypso | Voyager; ground-based Saturn searches | Voyager team; P. Laques, J. Lecacheux, B. Smith, D. Pascu and others | Ring shepherds and Lagrange-point moons | JPL |
| 1980 | Spacewatch founded | Steward Observatory 0.91 m | Tom Gehrels; Robert McMillan | An electronic asteroid survey, later the first to detect moving objects in real time | Spacewatch |
| 1983 Jan–Nov | IRAS all-sky survey | 12, 25, 60, 100 μm satellite | IRAS team | More than 96% of the sky in the thermal infrared | IRAS supplement |
| 1983 May 6 | First asteroid motion detected with a CCD, (110) Lydia | RCA 320×512 CCD; image subtraction | Spacewatch | Difference imaging of a moving body | Spacewatch |
| 1983 Oct 11 | Phaethon | IRAS fast-moving source; Palomar optical confirmation | Simon Green; Charles Kowal | First asteroid discovered from space, in thermal emission | IAUC 3878 |
| 1983–1985 | IRAS “mystery” sources resolved | Unmatched cool point sources, then optical spectroscopy | J. R. Houck and colleagues | Nine candidates: eight galaxies and one cirrus knot, not planets | Houck et al. 1984; Houck et al. 1985 |
| 1984–1985 | Production drift scanning; first automatic asteroid detection | CCD time-delay integration; moving-object software | Spacewatch; David Rabinowitz | Detection moved from the eye to the program | Spacewatch |
| 1985–1986 | Puck and other inner Uranian moons | Voyager 2 | Voyager imaging team | Spacecraft inventory of the Uranus system | JPL |
| 1988 Jun 9 | Pluto’s atmosphere confirmed (hinted 1985) | Stellar occultation | W. Hubbard; J. Elliot and teams | Occultations measure what images cannot | Hubbard et al. 1988 |
| 1988 | Harrington’s Planet X grid | 344,736 trial perturbers fitted to Uranus and Neptune | R. S. Harrington | Predicted a southern location; the signal was later explained away | Harrington 1988 |
| 1989 Aug 22 | Castalia’s shape | Arecibo delay–Doppler radar; shape inversion | S. Ostro; S. Hudson | First asteroid shape from radar: a bifurcated body | Nolan et al. 2026 |
| 1989 | Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Proteus | Voyager 2 | Voyager imaging team | Neptune’s inner moons | JPL |
| 1989 Oct 27 | 1989 UP, first NEO found with a CCD | Spacewatch 0.91 m; trail seen on the live display | David Rabinowitz | Electronic reporting; follow-up four hours later | Spacewatch |
| 1990 | Pan | Archival Voyager images, search guided by a ring gap | Mark Showalter | A moon found years after the data were taken | JPL |
| 1990 May–Jun | MODP real-time trials | Tektronix 2048² CCD; three-scan linear-motion test | David Rabinowitz | 304 asteroids in 19 nights over 150 deg² to V ≈ 20.5 | Rabinowitz 1991 |
| 1990 Sep 5 | 1990 SS, first NEO discovered automatically | Spacewatch MODP | Spacewatch | Software, not an observer, made the detection | Spacewatch |
| 1991 | 1991 BA | Spacewatch drift scanning; rapid orbit | J. Scotti; D. Rabinowitz; B. Marsden | A very fast, very close object | Spacewatch |
Exoplanet prehistory
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 Jul 25 | First coronagraph | Lyot coronagraph, Pic du Midi | Bernard Lyot | Suppressing a bright source to see a faint one beside it | Lyot 1939 |
| 1952 Oct | Close-in giant planets proposed as detectable | Radial velocity and eclipses (proposal) | Otto Struve | A Jupiter at 1/50 au would give about ±0.2 km/s and eclipses of about 0.02 mag | Struve 1952 |
| 1963 | Barnard’s star planet claim | Photographic astrometry, Sproul 24-inch, 2,413 plates | Peter van de Kamp | 24-year, 1.6 Jupiter-mass companion; later rejected | van de Kamp 1963 |
| 1973 | Barnard’s star claim undermined | Independent plates; a control field on the Sproul plates | G. Gatewood, H. Eichhorn; J. Hershey | Instrument changes near 1949 mimicked an orbit | Gatewood & Eichhorn 1973; Hershey 1973 |
| 1988 | Precise RV survey; Gamma Cephei signal | HF absorption cell, CFHT 3.6 m, 13 m/s | B. Campbell, G. Walker, S. Yang | Planet interpretation withdrawn, then confirmed in 2002 | Campbell et al. 1988 |
| 1989 | HD 114762 b | Precision RV, 84-day orbit | D. Latham, T. Mazeh, M. Mayor and others | Minimum mass about 11 Jupiter masses; read by the authors as a probable brown dwarf | Latham et al. 1989 |
| 1991 | Microlensing proposed for planets | Binary-lens theory | Shude Mao; Bohdan Paczyński | Short perturbations of hours to days on a lensing event | Mao & Paczyński 1991 |
| 1991 Jul | PSR 1829−10 planet claim | Pulsar timing, Lovell telescope | M. Bailes, A. Lyne, S. Shemar | Withdrawn in January 1992: a 7′ position error left a six-month residual | Bailes et al. 1991; Lyne & Bailes 1992 |
1992–2009: the Kuiper belt and the first exoplanets
Within a single year, 1992, both new fields opened: the first accepted planets beyond the Solar System, around a pulsar, and the first body of the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto. The Kuiper-belt story is in Chapter 5. Its theme is that the limit of a survey was often set by software rather than photons: Eris sat in the 2003 images until a slower motion search found it, and Psamathe was found by an algorithm after the eye had missed it. Digital tracking began here (Chapter 17), as did dedicated NEO surveys (Chapter 14) and irregular-moon surveys (Chapter 19). On the exoplanet side the era runs from the first detections by timing, velocity, transit, microlensing and imaging (Chapters 29 to 33) to the launch of Kepler.
Solar System and methods
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | Earliest attributed shift-and-stack (“recombination”) search | CCD pencil beam | J. A. Tyson, P. Guhathakurta, G. Bernstein, P. Hut | Adding exposures along trial motions; known only through later citations | Parker & Kavelaars 2010 |
| 1992 | C/1992 J1, first comet found automatically | Spacewatch CCD survey | Spacewatch | Software extended to comets | Spacewatch |
| 1992 Aug 30 | 1992 QB1 (Albion) | UH 2.2 m; Tektronix 2048² CCD; four 900 s exposures, blinked by eye | David Jewitt; Jane Luu | First Kuiper-belt object beyond Pluto: R = 22.8, about 41 au, moving 2.6″ per hour | Jewitt & Luu 1993 |
| 1993 Mar 28 | 1993 FW | Same program | Jewitt; Luu | A second object: QB1 was a population | Jewitt & Luu 1993 |
| 1993 | No dynamical evidence for Planet X | Refit of Uranus with Voyager’s Neptune mass | E. M. Standish | Correcting known masses and catalogue errors removed the residuals | Standish 1993 |
| 1993 Aug 28 / 1994 Feb 17 | Dactyl, moon of Ida (imaged / recognised) | Galileo spacecraft images | Ann Harch and the Galileo imaging team | First asteroid moon, recognised six months after the flyby | NASA |
| 1994 Aug (paper 1995) | Hubble excess of comet-sized TNOs claim | HST WFPC2; 34 exposures median-stacked along trial motions | A. Cochran, H. Levison, S. A. Stern, M. Duncan | An early blind stack with a reverse-motion control; later judged likely noise | Cochran et al. 1995 |
| 1995 | First homogeneous deep KBO census | UH 2.2 m; blinded artificial movers | David Jewitt; Jane Luu | Seven objects in 1.2 deg², reliable recovery to R ≈ 24.5 | Jewitt & Luu 1995 |
| 1995 Jul 23 | Comet Hale–Bopp | Visual, independent | Alan Hale; Thomas Bopp | Amateurs found a great comet at 7.15 au | NASA |
| 1996 Jul 14 | 133P/Elst–Pizarro seen active | ESO 1 m | E. Elst, G. Pizarro; later H. Hsieh, D. Jewitt | Prototype main-belt comet | Snodgrass et al. 2017 |
| 1996 Oct 15 | 1996 TL66 | UH 2.2 m eight-chip mosaic; automated detection | J. Luu, B. Marsden, D. Jewitt, C. Trujillo and others | First scattered-disk object, a ≈ 84 au, e ≈ 0.58; the short arc first fit a plutino | Luu et al. 1997 |
| 1996 / 1998 | LINEAR | GEODSS-type telescopes, back-illuminated CCDs, Socorro | Grant Stokes and MIT Lincoln Laboratory | More than 151,000 observations in its first month; 256 NEAs in 2000 | MIT LL |
| 1997 | 1997 XF11 | Spacewatch; archival positions | J. Scotti; B. Marsden | A warning about announcing impact odds from short arcs | Spacewatch |
| 1997 Aug 31 | Deep Keck stack | Keck II LRIS, 29 × 600 s; reverse-motion control | Eugene Chiang; Michael Brown | Detection to V = 27.2, half-completeness V = 27.94 | Chiang & Brown 1999 |
| 1997 Sep 6–7 | Caliban and Sycorax | Palomar CCD; frames inspected individually | B. Gladman, P. Nicholson, J. Burns, J. J. Kavelaars | First irregular moons of Uranus | Gladman et al. 1998 |
| 1997 Dec | Optimal image subtraction | Least-squares convolution kernel on OGLE-II images | C. Alard; R. H. Lupton | The basis of difference imaging in surveys since | Alard & Lupton 1998 |
| 1998 | Pencil-beam surveys with shifted stacks | Palomar 5 m and CFHT | B. Gladman, J. J. Kavelaars, P. Nicholson, T. Loredo, J. Burns | Five TNOs; about 90 per deg² brighter than R ≈ 25.9 | Gladman et al. 1998 |
| 1998 | Catalina Sky Survey founded | Arizona telescopes, later Siding Spring | Steve Larson; Tim Spahr; Carl Hergenrother | 314 NEAs in 2005 against LINEAR’s 137 | Catalina; CNEOS |
| 1998 Oct | Deep Ecliptic Survey begins | Mosaic cameras on 4 m telescopes; red/cyan image pairs | R. Millis, M. Buie, L. Wasserman, J. Elliot and others | 382 designated objects by 2003, 196 dynamically classified | Elliot et al. 2005 |
| 2000 | Orbit fitting for distant short arcs | Portable C code, a parameterisation for KBOs | Gary Bernstein; Bharat Khushalani | One second per orbit; the orbit was not the bottleneck | Bernstein & Khushalani 2000 |
| 2000–2001 | Jupiter’s irregular moons as a population; Themisto recovered | UH 2.2 m and CFHT wide-field CCDs | S. Sheppard, D. Jewitt, Y. Fernández, E. Magnier, J. Kleyna | 23 new moons; one at a time became a survey | Sheppard & Jewitt 2003 |
| 2000 Aug 7 – 2001 | Twelve Saturn irregulars | ESO 2.2 m, CFHT | B. Gladman, J. J. Kavelaars, M. Holman and others | Orbital clustering into families; known irregulars rose from 10 to 39 | Gladman et al. 2001 |
| 2000 Sep–Oct | 2000 DP107 binary | Goldstone and Arecibo radar | J.-L. Margot, M. Nolan, L. Benner, S. Ostro | First well-characterised radar binary NEA; about 16% of NEAs larger than 200 m estimated to be binary | Margot et al. 2002 |
| 2001 | CFHT survey with automated triplets | CFH12K mosaic; MODS on two Sun Ultra 10s | C. Trujillo, D. Jewitt, J. Luu | 86 detections in 73 deg², with a measured efficiency curve | Trujillo et al. 2001 |
| 2001 Apr | 1998 WW31, first Kuiper-belt binary after Pluto–Charon | CFHT archive reprocessing | C. Veillet and colleagues | Noticed when old images were reduced again | Veillet et al. 2002 |
| 2001 Nov | Caltech Wide Area Sky Survey begins | Palomar Oschin Schmidt with the NEAT camera | Chad Trujillo; Michael Brown | 5,108 deg² searched for the rare bright end | Trujillo & Brown 2003 |
| 2002 | Quaoar | Palomar wide-field search; HST size measurement | C. Trujillo; M. Brown | A large KBO found as a moving point, then resolved | NASA |
| 2001–2003 (paper 2004) | Five Neptune irregulars | CTIO and CFHT; stacks centred on the planet’s motion | M. Holman, J. J. Kavelaars, T. Grav, B. Gladman and others | Psamathe was found by the algorithm and missed by eye | Holman et al. 2004 |
| 2003 Jan–Feb (paper 2004) | Ultra-deep HST TNO search | HST ACS; ~10¹⁴ trial trajectories; implanted sources | G. Bernstein, D. Trilling, R. Allen, M. Brown, M. Holman, R. Malhotra | Three objects in 0.02 deg² at 50% completeness 29.17; far fewer than extrapolated | Bernstein et al. 2004 |
| 2003 Mar 7 / 2005 | Haumea (observed / announced) | Sierra Nevada and Palomar imaging, with archival data | J. L. Ortiz’s team; M. Brown’s team | Credit disputed; the IAU lists Sierra Nevada and no individual discoverer | MPEC 2005-O36; NASA |
| 2003 Aug 29–30 | Ultradeep Uranus search; Margaret | Subaru | S. Sheppard, D. Jewitt, J. Kleyna | 50% depth R = 26.1 | Sheppard et al. 2005 |
| 2003 Oct 21 / 2005 Jan 5 | Eris (imaged / recognised) | Palomar QUEST camera; slow-motion reprocessing | M. Brown, C. Trujillo, D. Rabinowitz | Moving 1.42″ per hour under a 1.5″ cutoff: a software limit, not a photon limit; 97.5 au | Brown et al. 2005 |
| 2003 Nov 14 (paper 2004) | Sedna | Palomar QUEST; precovery back to 2001 | M. Brown, C. Trujillo, D. Rabinowitz | R = 20.7 at 90.32 au; perihelion near 76 au, detached from Neptune | Brown et al. 2004 |
| 2005 Mar 31 | Makemake | Palomar wide-field survey | M. Brown, C. Trujillo, D. Rabinowitz | R ≈ 16.8: wide shallow coverage still mattered | MPEC 2005-O42 |
| 2005 | Nix and Hydra | HST companion search | H. Weaver, A. Stern, M. Mutchler and team | Pluto’s small moons before New Horizons | JPL |
| 2005 | Daphnis | Cassini cameras | Cassini imaging team | A moon in a ring gap | JPL |
| 2005 Nov 26 | 176P/LINEAR active | Gemini North; targeted search of 599 asteroids | Henry Hsieh | Main-belt comets are a class, found by targeted search | Hsieh 2009 |
| 2006 | IAU definition of a planet | Resolution B5 | International Astronomical Union | Pluto became a dwarf planet because it has not cleared its neighbourhood | NASA |
| 2006 | CFEPS strategy and presurvey | CFHT MegaCam; 42,286 implanted test objects | R. L. Jones and collaborators | Recovery bias designed out by returning to blocks of sky | Jones et al. 2006 |
| 2006 | Six new TNO binaries | HST NICMOS; PSF fitting | D. Stephens; K. Noll | 9 of 81 objects binary | Stephens & Noll 2006 |
| 2007 May – 2008 Sep | Palomar Distant Solar System Survey | Two-night cadence; 11,786 deg² to R ≈ 21.3 | M. Schwamb, M. Brown, D. Rabinowitz, D. Ragozzine | 25 new objects; no second Sedna; Eris missed in a chip gap | Schwamb et al. 2010 |
| 2008 Feb | 2001 SN263, first triple NEA | Arecibo radar | Arecibo radar team | Radar finds moons that light curves miss | Nolan et al. 2026 |
| 2008 | Pixelised-kernel difference imaging | Discrete kernel fit | D. M. Bramich | A second widely used subtraction method | Bramich 2008 |
| 2008 Oct 6 | 2008 TC3 | Mount Lemmon 1.5 m (Catalina) | Richard Kowalski | First asteroid found before it hit Earth, about 20 hours ahead; meteorites recovered in Sudan | MPEC 2008-T50 |
| 2009 | Automated low-threshold stack search | Subaru, 148 frames, 736 trial motions | C. Fuentes, M. George, M. Holman | 20 TNOs to R = 26.76 | Fuentes et al. 2009 |
| 2009 | Sub-km KBO by occultation candidate | HST Fine Guidance Sensor data at 40 Hz | H. Schlichting, E. Ofek, R. Sari and others | A 520 m radius body at 45 au, far too faint to image | Schlichting et al. 2009 |
| 2009 Oct 9 | 2002 TX300 occultation | 21 telescopes | J. Elliot and collaborators | First TNO occultation beyond Pluto–Charon; radius 143 km | Elliot et al. 2010 |
| 2009 Dec | WISE launched | 40 cm infrared telescope, 3.4–22 μm | E. Wright and team | All-sky mid-infrared survey, later NEOWISE | Wright et al. 2010 |
Exoplanets
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 Jan 9 | PSR B1257+12 planets | Arecibo pulse timing of a 6.2 ms pulsar | Aleksander Wolszczan; Dale Frail | First accepted exoplanets: 66.6 and 98.2 days, 3.4 and 2.8 Earth masses minimum | Wolszczan & Frail 1992 |
| 1992 | OGLE begins (OGLE-II 1997, OGLE-III 2001 with difference imaging) | Las Campanas; Warsaw 1.3 m telescope | Andrzej Udalski and team | The microlensing and transit survey that would find planets by both methods | Udalski et al. 2015 |
| 1993 | ELODIE spectrograph begins operating | Fibre-fed cross-correlation spectrograph, OHP 1.93 m | A. Baranne, D. Queloz, M. Mayor and others | Under 15 m/s at V ~ 9 | Baranne et al. 1996 |
| 1994 | Pulsar planets interact | Arecibo timing with an interacting orbit model | A. Wolszczan and collaborators | Mutual perturbations confirmed the planetary interpretation | Perryman 2000 |
| 1995 | 51 Pegasi b | ELODIE, 142 G and K dwarfs since 1994, 13 m/s precision | Michel Mayor; Didier Queloz; confirmed by G. Marcy, P. Butler | A 0.47 Jupiter-mass planet in a 4.23-day orbit around a Sun-like star | Mayor & Queloz 1995 |
| 1996 | Iodine-cell Doppler to 3 m/s | I₂ absorption cell, forward modelling; Lick and Keck | R. P. Butler, G. Marcy, S. Vogt and others | The precision behind the next decade of RV planets | Butler et al. 1996 |
| 1996 | 70 Virginis b, 47 Ursae Majoris b | Lick RV program | Geoff Marcy; Paul Butler | 51 Peg was not a fluke | Perryman 2000 |
| 1999 | Upsilon Andromedae multi-planet system | Lick and associated RVs | D. Fischer, P. Butler, G. Marcy and others | First multi-planet system around a normal star | Perryman 2000 |
| 1999 | HD 209458 b transits | STARE camera, guided by the RV ephemeris | D. Charbonneau, T. Brown, D. Latham, M. Mayor; G. Henry independently | Radius 1.27 Jupiter radii: the inclination ambiguity of RV broken | Charbonneau et al. 2000 |
| 2001 | Sodium in HD 209458 b’s atmosphere | HST STIS transit spectroscopy | D. Charbonneau, T. Brown, R. Noyes, R. Gilliland | Transits became a spectroscopic probe | NASA |
| 2001 | Hipparcos planet orbits shown spurious | Reanalysis of Hipparcos astrometry | D. Pourbaix; F. Arenou | Noise fitted as face-on orbits in 46 systems | Pourbaix & Arenou 2001 |
| 2002 | Box-fitting least squares (BLS) | Periodic box search of light curves | G. Kovács, S. Zucker, T. Mazeh | The standard transit search algorithm | Kovács et al. 2002 |
| 2002 | Gamma Cephei b confirmed | Combined RVs over a longer baseline | A. Hatzes with the original Canadian team | A withdrawn 1988 signal vindicated | NASA |
| 2003 | OGLE-TR-56 b | OGLE transit photometry; Keck HIRES RVs | M. Konacki, G. Torres, D. Sasselov, S. Jha; OGLE team | First planet from a blind transit survey | Konacki et al. 2003 |
| 2003 Feb 11 | HARPS first light | ESO 3.6 m, R ≈ 115,000 | M. Mayor, F. Pepe, D. Queloz | The workhorse of sub-m/s RV searches | Mayor et al. 2003 |
| 2003 | Pulsar planet true masses | 12 years of Arecibo timing; planet–planet interactions | M. Konacki; A. Wolszczan | 4.3 and 3.9 Earth masses, inclinations solved | Konacki & Wolszczan 2003 |
| 2004 | First secure microlensing planet | OGLE 1.3 m and MOA 0.6 m light curves | I. Bond, A. Udalski and the MOA and OGLE teams | Mass ratio 0.0039; a planet seen by its lensing | Bond et al. 2004 |
| 2004 | 2M1207 b imaged | VLT NACO adaptive optics with infrared wavefront sensing | G. Chauvin, A.-M. Lagrange and others | A 5 Jupiter-mass companion 780 mas from a brown dwarf | Chauvin et al. 2004 |
| 2005 | Transit-timing variations quantified | Theory | E. Agol and colleagues; M. Holman, N. Murray | Unseen planets betrayed by shifted transits | Agol et al. 2005; Holman & Murray 2005 |
| 2006 | OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb | PLANET, OGLE and MOA photometry | J.-P. Beaulieu and collaborators | A cold 5.5 Earth-mass planet | Beaulieu et al. 2006 |
| 2006 | Angular differential imaging | Gemini North, field rotation | C. Marois, D. Lafrenière and others | Starlight subtracted using the star’s own images | Marois et al. 2006 |
| 2007 | LOCI | Optimised PSF subtraction | D. Lafrenière and others | Up to about 3 times more sensitive | Lafrenière et al. 2007 |
| 2007 | V391 Pegasi b candidate | Pulsation timing of a subdwarf B star | R. Silvotti and others | Planet from pulsations; uncertain after 2018 follow-up | Silvotti et al. 2007 |
| 2008 | Keck planet search occurrence | RV detections with non-detection limits | A. Cumming and colleagues | 10.5% of stars have 0.3–10 Jupiter masses within 2,000 days | Cumming et al. 2008 |
| 2008 | HR 8799 b, c, d | Keck and Gemini AO imaging with ADI | C. Marois, B. Macintosh, T. Barman and others | First directly imaged multi-planet system | Marois et al. 2008 |
| 2008 | Fomalhaut b claim | HST ACS coronagraph | P. Kalas, J. Graham and others | Influential optical image, later reinterpreted | Kalas et al. 2008 |
| 2008 | Beta Pictoris b candidate | VLT NACO deep imaging | A.-M. Lagrange and others | A giant planet inside a known debris disk | Lagrange et al. 2008 |
| 2009 Mar | Kepler launched | Continuous space photometry of one field | W. Borucki, D. Koch and team | From giant-planet discoveries to a census of small planets | NASA |
| 2009 | GJ 1214 b | MEarth robotic telescopes; HARPS | D. Charbonneau, Z. Berta, J. Irwin and others | A transiting super-Earth around a nearby M dwarf | Charbonneau et al. 2009 |
| 2009–2010 | VB 10 b claim refuted | Ground astrometry; RVs | S. Pravdo, S. Shaklan; G. Anglada-Escudé and others | An astrometric planet not seen in velocity | Pravdo & Shaklan 2009; Anglada-Escudé et al. 2010 |
2010–2019: surveys, archives and statistical discovery
In this decade discovery became statistical on both sides. OSSOS designed its observations so that the selection function could be measured, Kepler validated planets by probability rather than by mass, and the Dark Energy Survey showed that a camera built for cosmology could find hundreds of TNOs. Linking algorithms (MOPS, HelioLinC), GPU stacking (KBMOD) and the first neural classifiers arrived. The outer Solar System is in Chapter 6, linking in Chapter 12, digital tracking in Chapters 17 and 18, Planet Nine in Chapters 8 and 9, occultations in Chapter 25, machine learning in Chapter 22, and Kepler and its successors in Chapter 30.
Solar System and methods
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 (MOPS paper 2013) | Pan-STARRS1 survey and its Moving Object Processing System | 1.8 m, 1.4-gigapixel camera, about 7 deg²; automated linking and orbit fitting | L. Denneau, R. Jedicke, T. Grav, M. Granvik, J. Kubica and others | A complete pipeline from transient catalogues to orbits | Denneau et al. 2013 |
| 2010 Nov 6 (paper 2011) | Eris’s size from an occultation | Multi-site stellar occultation | B. Sicardy and collaborators | Radius 1,163 ± 6 km: brightness alone had suggested Eris was larger than Pluto | Sicardy et al. 2011 |
| 2011 | NEOWISE first-year results | WISE moving-object pipeline | A. Mainzer and team | About 157,000 minor planets detected, about 33,000 new, in the thermal infrared | Mainzer et al. 2011 |
| 2011 | CFEPS final release | CFHT MegaCam, 321 deg², characterised blocks | J.-M. Petit and collaborators | 231 discoveries, 169 characterised and tracked, with a public survey simulator | Petit et al. 2011 |
| 2011, 2012 | Kerberos, Styx | HST imaging of the Pluto system | M. Showalter, H. Weaver, A. Stern and others | Pluto’s moon inventory before New Horizons | JPL |
| 2012 Sep | DECam first light | Blanco 4 m, 62-CCD camera | B. Flaugher and the DES team | The camera behind DES, DEEP and many extreme TNOs | Flaugher et al. 2015 |
| 2012 (paper 2014) | 2012 VP113 | DECam; Magellan follow-up; CFHT precovery | Chad Trujillo; Scott Sheppard | A second Sedna-like body: perihelion 80 au, found at 82.7 au | Trujillo & Sheppard 2014; Sheppard & Trujillo 2016 |
| 2013 (paper 2019) | Hippocamp | Archival HST images combined along predicted orbital motion | M. Showalter, I. de Pater, J. Lissauer, R. French | A tiny Neptunian moon found in old data | Showalter et al. 2019 |
| 2013 | TAOS seven-year occultation search | Four 50 cm telescopes at 5 Hz | Z.-W. Zhang, C. Alcock and team | 1,159,651 star-hours, no events: an upper limit on small KBOs | Zhang et al. 2013 |
| 2013 Apr 3 (paper 2014) | Synthetic tracking demonstrated | Palomar Hale 200-inch with the CHIMERA camera | M. Shao, C. Zhai and others | Astrometry of known NEOs to 6.8 mas, against 43 mas conventionally | Shao et al. 2014 |
| 2013 Jun 3 (paper 2014) | Rings of Chariklo | Multi-site occultation at 10 Hz | F. Braga-Ribas, B. Sicardy, J. L. Ortiz and others | First rings around a small body | Braga-Ribas et al. 2014 |
| 2013 Sep (paper 2014) | GPU synthetic-tracking search | CHIMERA EMCCDs; Tesla K20c | C. Zhai, M. Shao | Blind detections to 23.1 mag; a data cube searched in under 90 s | Zhai et al. 2014 |
| 2013 Dec 23 | NEOWISE reactivated | WISE at 3.4 and 4.6 μm | A. Mainzer and team | First new NEO six days later | Mainzer et al. 2014 |
| 2013–2017 (release 2018) | OSSOS | CFHT MegaCam; moving blocks of sky; about 10,000 implants per CCD | M. Bannister, B. Gladman, J. J. Kavelaars, J.-M. Petit and others | 838 of 840 characterised discoveries tracked: a census with a measured selection function | Bannister et al. 2018 |
| 2014 | No distant companion in WISE | WISE multi-epoch astrometry | Kevin Luhman | Limits on Saturn- and Jupiter-mass companions; distances depend on the cooling model | Luhman 2014 |
| 2014 Jan 1 | 2014 AA before impact | Catalina; systematic ranging | R. Kowalski; D. Farnocchia and others | Seven observations in about 70 minutes, about 20 hours before entry | Farnocchia et al. 2015 |
| 2014 May–Dec (paper 2017) | Real-time streak discoveries | Palomar 1.2 m Oschin (PTF); streak finder and random forest | A. Waszczak, T. Prince and others | Ten small NEAs found as streaks | Waszczak et al. 2017 |
| 2014 Jun 26 | Arrokoth (2014 MU69) | HST, 194 orbits; stacks guided by reachable orbits | M. Buie, J. Spencer, S. Porter, S. Benecchi and others | A flyby target for a spacecraft already in flight, at about 26.8 mag | Buie et al. 2024 |
| 2015 Jun | ATLAS first light (funded 2013) | 0.5 m telescopes, about 29 deg², 30 s exposures | John Tonry; Larry Denneau; Ari Heinze | Shallow, fast all-sky coverage for incoming impactors | Tonry et al. 2018 |
| 2015 | Digital tracking with a small telescope | WIYN 0.9 m; 32-core workstation | A. Heinze, S. Metchev, J. Trollo | 156 new asteroids, far fainter than single images | Heinze et al. 2015 |
| 2015 Apr 27 | Moon of Makemake | HST WFC3 | A. Parker and others | A companion 7.8 magnitudes fainter than its primary | Parker et al. 2016 |
| 2015 Oct 13 (paper 2018) | 2015 TG387 (Leleākūhonua) | Subaru discovery; four oppositions of follow-up | S. Sheppard, C. Trujillo, D. Tholen, N. Kaib | Found at about 80 au; a = 1,170 au; perihelion far from Neptune | Sheppard et al. 2019 |
| 2016 Jan | Planet Nine hypothesis | Orbital clustering of extreme TNOs; numerical dynamics | Konstantin Batygin; Michael Brown | A distant giant planet proposed from orbital alignment | Batygin & Brown 2016 |
| 2016 | Extreme TNO survey | DECam, Subaru, Magellan; 1,080 deg² | Scott Sheppard; Chad Trujillo | 2014 SR349, 2013 FT28, 2014 FE72; about 90% of fields sensitive to motion as slow as 0.3″ per hour | Sheppard & Trujillo 2016 |
| 2016 | Proper image subtraction (ZOGY) | Likelihood-ratio derivation | B. Zackay, E. Ofek, A. Gal-Yam | Optimal difference imaging; later adopted by ZTF | Zackay et al. 2016 |
| 2016 Jun 28 (paper 2019) | Kilometre KBO by occultation candidate | Two 28 cm telescopes with CMOS cameras at 15.4 Hz | K. Arimatsu and the OASES team | A 1.3 km body detected with amateur-class equipment | Arimatsu et al. 2019 |
| 2016 Dec 19 | Pan-STARRS1 DR1 (DR2 2019, 1.5 PB of images) | Public archive at MAST | K. Chambers and the PS1 team | A survey becomes an archive for precovery and new searches | Chambers et al. 2016 |
| 2017 | Planet Nine searched in coadded WISE | Time-binned WISE/NEOWISE coadds | A. Meisner, B. Bromley, P. Nugent, D. Schlegel and others | An infrared archive searched below single-exposure depth | Meisner et al. 2017 |
| 2017 Jan 21 | Ring of Haumea | Occultation from 12 telescopes | J. L. Ortiz and collaborators | Ring at 2,287 km radius around a dwarf planet | Ortiz et al. 2017 |
| 2017 Feb 15 | Backyard Worlds launched | WISE flipbooks on Zooniverse | M. Kuchner, J. Faherty and volunteers | Volunteers find moving brown dwarfs; first a T5.5 dwarf | Kuchner et al. 2017 |
| 2017 Jul 17 | Arrokoth’s shape by occultation | 24–25 mobile stations; SOFIA | M. Buie, S. Porter and team | Five chords hinted at a contact binary before the flyby | Buie et al. 2020 |
| 2017 Oct 19 | 1I/ʻOumuamua | Pan-STARRS1 survey | Robert Weryk and the Pan-STARRS team | First known interstellar object | NASA |
| 2017 | Machine-learned real/bogus for moving objects | HSC catalogues; random forest | H.-W. Lin and collaborators | About 96% of real detections kept at a 1% false-positive rate | Lin et al. 2017 |
| 2018 | HSC-SSP moving-object search | Catalogue reorganised in HEALPix, trial lines, tracklets | Y.-T. Chen, H.-W. Lin, M. Alexandersen and others | 231 TNO candidates from a survey not designed for them | Chen et al. 2018 |
| 2018 | HelioLinC | Heliocentric transformation and clustering of tracklets | M. Holman, M. Payne, P. Blankley, R. Janssen, S. Kuindersma | About 41,000 new orbits from the MPC’s unlinked tracklets, O(N log N) | Holman et al. 2018 |
| 2018 Feb 5 | 2018 CL, ZTF’s first streak NEA | ZTF; streak detection | Q. Ye and colleagues | 45 NEAs in 232 nights from streaks | Ye et al. 2019 |
| 2018 Jun 2 | 2018 LA before impact | Catalina; rapid impact orbits | R. Kowalski; MPC and CNEOS analysts | Found hours before entry over southern Africa | NASA |
| 2018 Jul 16 | Twelve new moons of Jupiter, including Valetudo | DECam and other telescopes | Scott Sheppard and team | Twelve moons, nine of them retrograde | Carnegie |
| 2018 | First CNN for Solar System objects (simulated data) | Euclid simulations; MobileNet | M. Lieu and others | Accuracy 0.956 on simulated images | Lieu et al. 2018 |
| 2018 Nov 10 / Dec 17 | Farout (2018 VG18) imaged / announced | Subaru; Magellan follow-up | S. Sheppard, D. Tholen, C. Trujillo | First object observed beyond 100 au, about 120 au | Carnegie |
| 2018 Nov 15 | DeepStreaks in operation; 2018 VJ10 | ZTF; CNN on a P100 GPU | D. Duev, A. Mahabal and others | About 7 million streak candidates reduced to 33,000, keeping 202 of 210 known | Duev et al. 2019 |
| 2019 | KBMOD on GPUs | CUDA likelihood stacking; HiTS data | P. Whidden, J. B. Kalmbach, A. Connolly and others | 2.4 × 10¹¹ trajectories in about 180 s | Whidden et al. 2019 |
| 2019 | Hubble Asteroid Hunter | HST archive, volunteers and AutoML | S. Kruk and collaborators | 1,701 asteroid trails in archival images; 454 unknown objects by 2024 | Kruk et al. 2022; García-Martín et al. 2024 |
| 2019 Aug 30 | 2I/Borisov | Amateur-built telescope | Gennady Borisov | First active interstellar comet, found by an amateur | NASA |
Exoplanets
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Kepler Transiting Planet Search | Wavelet-based matched filter, 7.1σ threshold | J. Jenkins and the Kepler team | The pipeline behind Kepler’s candidate lists | Jenkins et al. 2010 |
| 2010 May | Kepler-9, measured TTVs | Kepler photometry; dynamical fit | M. Holman, D. Ragozzine, D. Fabrycky and others | Two transiting planets pulling on each other | Ragozzine & Holman 2019 |
| 2010 | A planet’s own orbital velocity | VLT CRIRES, R = 100,000; CO cross-correlation | I. Snellen, R. de Kok, E. de Mooij, S. Albrecht | HD 209458 b’s atmosphere seen moving at 140 km/s | Snellen et al. 2010 |
| 2010 | NN Serpentis planets claim | Eclipse timing of a binary | K. Beuermann and others | Two giant planets; later models fail to predict new eclipse times | Beuermann et al. 2010 |
| 2011 | Kepler-11 | Kepler; joint transit and dynamics | J. Lissauer, D. Fabrycky, E. Ford and others | Six transiting planets in a compact system | Lissauer et al. 2011 |
| 2011 | Kepler-16 b | Photodynamical model of an eclipsing binary | L. Doyle, J. Carter, D. Fabrycky and others | A planet transiting both stars | Doyle et al. 2011 |
| 2011 | Kepler-19 c | TTVs of a transiting planet | S. Ballard and others | A non-transiting planet inferred from timing | Ballard et al. 2011 |
| 2011 | Free-floating Jupiters claim | MOA-II microlensing | T. Sumi and collaborators | About 1.8 per star; OGLE-IV set a limit below 0.25 in 2017 | Sumi et al. 2011; Mróz et al. 2017 |
| 2012 | Planet Hunters’ first candidates | Kepler light curves inspected by the public | D. Fischer, M. Schwamb, K. Schawinski and others | The first two planet candidates found by the public; both survived professional vetting | Fischer et al. 2012 |
| 2012 | Cold planets are common | Microlensing survey sensitivity | A. Cassan and collaborators | 17% of stars host 0.3–10 Jupiter masses at 0.5–10 au | Cassan et al. 2012 |
| 2012 | KLIP and PynPoint | Principal-component PSF subtraction | R. Soummer and others; A. Amara, S. Quanz | Statistical starlight models for direct imaging | Soummer et al. 2012; Amara & Quanz 2012 |
| 2012 | Tau Boötis b in emission | VLT CRIRES dayside CO | M. Brogi, I. Snellen and others | A non-transiting planet’s true mass, 5.95 Jupiter masses | Brogi et al. 2012 |
| 2013 | Earth-size planet occurrence | Independent Kepler pipeline with 40,000 injections | E. Petigura, A. Howard, G. Marcy | 11 ± 4% of Sun-like stars have 1–2 Earth-radius planets at 1–4 times Earth’s irradiation | Petigura et al. 2013 |
| 2014 | Kepler-186 f | Kepler; statistical validation | E. Quintana, T. Barclay and others | An Earth-size planet in an M dwarf’s habitable zone | Quintana et al. 2014 |
| 2015 | KMTNet begins | Three 1.6 m telescopes, 4 deg² cameras | D.-J. Kim and the KMTNet team | Continuous coverage of the bulge for microlensing | Kim et al. 2018 |
| 2015 | Kepler pipeline efficiency measured | Pixel-level injections | J. Christiansen and others | Only 25.8% recovery at the nominal 7.1σ threshold | Christiansen et al. 2015 |
| 2015 | Kepler-452 b | Kepler; validation and ground follow-up | J. Jenkins and the Kepler team | A near-Earth-size habitable-zone candidate around a Sun-like star | NASA |
| 2016 | 1,284 planets validated at once | vespa false-positive probabilities for 7,056 KOIs | T. Morton, S. Bryson, J. Coughlin, J. Rowe and others | Validation by probability; such batches produce the transit spikes in the discovery chart | Morton et al. 2016 |
| 2016 | Proxima Centauri b | HARPS and UVES; Pale Red Dot campaign | G. Anglada-Escudé, P. Amado, J. Barnes and others | A low-amplitude planet around the nearest star | Anglada-Escudé et al. 2016 |
| 2016 | Microlensing mass-ratio function | MOA-II, 1,474 events | D. Suzuki, D. Bennett, T. Sumi and others | A break near Neptune’s mass ratio | Suzuki et al. 2016 |
| 2017 | TRAPPIST-1 seven planets | TRAPPIST, Spitzer and others | M. Gillon, A. Triaud, B.-O. Demory, E. Jehin and others | Earth-size transits made deep by an ultracool host | Gillon et al. 2017 |
| 2017 | The radius valley | Kepler with improved stellar radii | B. Fulton, E. Petigura, A. Howard and others | A deficit of planets at 1.5–2.0 Earth radii | Fulton et al. 2017 |
| 2017 Nov 27 | ESPRESSO first light | VLT ultra-stable spectrograph | F. Pepe and team | Below 25 cm/s scatter within a night | Pepe et al. 2021 |
| 2017 Dec (paper 2018) | Kepler-90 i and Kepler-80 g by deep learning | CNN ranking of Kepler signals | C. Shallue; A. Vanderburg | Machine learning found planets in an archive already searched | Shallue & Vanderburg 2018 |
| 2018 | Supervised ML for direct imaging (SODINN) | CNN and RNN on ADI sequences | C. Gomez Gonzalez and others | About 2 to 10 times the true-positive rate of standard subtraction in the paper’s tests | Gomez Gonzalez et al. 2018 |
| 2018 | Kepler DR25 catalogue | Fully automated Robovetter with measured completeness and reliability | S. Thompson, J. Coughlin and others | 4,034 candidates, with the selection function published | Thompson et al. 2018 |
| 2018 Apr | TESS launched | Wide-field sector photometry | G. Ricker and team | Planets around bright nearby stars | NASA |
| 2018 | Hipparcos–Gaia accelerations | Proper-motion differences between missions | T. Brandt | Astrometric accelerations for about 98% of Hipparcos stars | Brandt 2018 |
| 2018 | Kepler-1625 b-i exomoon candidate | HST transit timing and shape | A. Teachey; D. Kipping | Contested evidence for a moon | Teachey & Kipping 2018 |
| 2019 | Transit least squares | Limb-darkened transit templates | M. Hippke; R. Heller | 93% recovery against 76% for BLS in the paper’s test | Hippke & Heller 2019 |
| 2019 | Planet detected by optical interferometry | VLTI GRAVITY | S. Lacour, M. Nowak and the GRAVITY Collaboration | HR 8799 e’s position to about 100 μas | Lacour et al. 2019 |
| 2019 | GPI Exoplanet Survey, first 300 stars | Gemini Planet Imager | E. Nielsen, R. De Rosa, B. Macintosh and others | 51 Eri b among the new companions; occurrence for 5–13 Jupiter masses at 10–100 au | Nielsen et al. 2019 |
2020 to October 2026: archives, GPUs and Rubin
The most recent years are told in Chapter 6, Chapter 15, Chapter 20 and Chapter 21. Three threads stand out. Archives became discovery instruments in their own right: 2017 OF201 was found entirely in old survey catalogues, and the 2003 Hubble field yielded new objects 23 years later. Searches moved onto GPUs and into orbit space, testing more than 10¹⁴ trajectories in a day. And Rubin began operating, with its first discoveries showing both genuine extreme orbits and short-arc solutions that dissolved on recovery. Optical searches for Planet Nine excluded most of its predicted population without finding it (Chapter 9). Among exoplanets, the frontier moved to completeness, validation and the faint limits of every method (Chapters 32 to 35).
Solar System and methods
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | DES first-four-year TNOs | Sparse single-epoch DECam detections linked in inverse-distance bins | P. Bernardinelli, G. Bernstein, M. Sako and others | 316 TNOs from a cosmology survey with no same-night repeats | Bernardinelli et al. 2020 |
| 2020 | Jupiter’s sub-km irregulars | 2010 CFHT sequence reprocessed with shift-and-stack | E. Ashton, M. Beaudoin, B. Gladman | 52 likely moons, used for a population estimate | Ashton et al. 2020 |
| 2021 Feb 10 | Farfarout (2018 AG37) confirmed | Subaru discovery images from January 2018; Gemini and Magellan follow-up | S. Sheppard, D. Tholen, C. Trujillo | 132 au, the most distant body observed; preliminary orbit 27–175 au | NOIRLab 2021 |
| 2021 | THOR | Test-orbit transformations and clustering on ZTF detections | J. Moeyens, M. Jurić, J. Ford, D. Bektešević and others | Linking without same-night tracklets: 97.4% recovery in its test | Moeyens et al. 2021 |
| 2021 Jul | Sentry-II becomes JPL’s impact monitor | Importance sampling of orbit uncertainty | J. Roa, D. Farnocchia, S. Chesley | 99% complete above impact probabilities of about 3 × 10⁻⁷ | Roa et al. 2021 |
| 2021 Aug 31 | Active Asteroids project launched | DECam cutouts on Zooniverse | C. Chandler, C. Trujillo and volunteers | Volunteers search for activity in archival images | Chandler et al. 2024 |
| 2021 | IRAS Planet Nine candidate | Scan-level reanalysis of IRAS | Michael Rowan-Robinson | A tentative candidate near 225 au, unconfirmed | Rowan-Robinson 2022 |
| 2022 | DES six-year outer Solar System search | Catalogue linking with ≳10¹³ pairs, 15–20 million CPU-hours | P. Bernardinelli, G. Bernstein, M. Sako, B. Yanny and others | 815 TNOs, a Centaur and an Oort-cloud comet | Bernardinelli et al. 2022 |
| 2022 | First optical Planet Nine exclusion | ZTF archive with a synthetic population | M. Brown; K. Batygin | About 56% of the predicted population excluded | Brown & Batygin 2022 |
| 2022 | Planet Nine limits from DES | DES Y6 data, 10,187 reference planets | M. Belyakov and others | A second survey’s exclusion map | Belyakov et al. 2022 |
| 2023 | Ring of Quaoar | Occultations including CHEOPS | B. Morgado, B. Sicardy, F. Braga-Ribas and others | A dense ring well outside the Roche limit | Morgado et al. 2023 |
| 2023 | GPU search for asteroids in exoplanet data | Synthetic tracking of dense stellar time series | A. Burdanov, S. Hasler, J. de Wit | Observations made for stars also find small bodies | Burdanov et al. 2023 |
| 2023 May | 62 new moons of Saturn | CFHT shift-and-stack, multi-year orbit linking | E. Ashton, B. Gladman and team | 145 known Saturnian moons in the May release | UBC |
| 2023 Jul 18 | HelioLinC3D’s first PHA, 2022 SF289 | Rubin’s linking code on archival ATLAS data | A. Heinze, S. Eggl, M. Jurić | First potentially hazardous asteroid found by Rubin’s linking software, in archival data | UW |
| 2023 (preprints) | DEEP V and VI | DECam long stares; KBMOD on NVIDIA A40s; multi-year linking | K. Napier, H. Smotherman, P. Bernardinelli, D. Trilling, D. Gerdes and others | About 2,300 faint candidates for population inference; 110 TNOs with multi-year orbits | Napier et al. 2023; Smotherman et al. 2023 |
| 2023 | NEO Surveyor design forecast | 50 cm infrared telescope at L1 | A. Mainzer and team | Required to find two-thirds of hazardous asteroids above 140 m; launch no earlier than 2027 | Mainzer et al. 2023 |
| 2024 Jan | 2024 BX1 before impact | Piszkéstető telescope; rapid impact orbit | Krisztián Sárneczky; MPC and NASA Scout | A small impactor found hours before entry over Germany | NASA |
| 2024 | Synthetic tracking finds real NEOs | GPU (V100) synthetic tracking | C. Zhai and others | 61 new NEOs | Zhai et al. 2024 |
| 2024 | Three-survey Planet Nine search | ZTF, DES and Pan-STARRS1 combined | M. Brown, M. Holman, K. Batygin | About 78% of the predicted population excluded, no detection | Brown et al. 2024 |
| 2024 Feb 23 | New moons of Uranus and Neptune | Magellan ultradeep stacks along planet motion | S. Sheppard and collaborators | S/2023 U1, S/2002 N5, S/2021 N1, to about magnitude 27 | Sheppard et al. 2024 |
| 2024 | New Horizons Subaru survey | HSC; KBMOD and neural-network vetting in crowded fields | W. Fraser, S. Porter, L. Peltier, J. J. Kavelaars and others | 239 objects, 11 candidates beyond 70 au | Fraser et al. 2024 |
| 2024 | FPGA search of the same Subaru images | Binarised moving-alignment search adapted from space-debris work | F. Yoshida, T. Yanagisawa and others | 84 candidates, seven linked objects | Yoshida et al. 2024 |
| 2024 Aug | NEOWISE ends | WISE | NEOWISE team | Final data release in November 2024 | NASA |
| 2024 Dec (arXiv 2025) | Decametre main-belt asteroids in JWST data | JWST MIRI; GPU synthetic tracking of TRAPPIST-1 monitoring | A. Burdanov, J. de Wit and others | 139 unassociated detections plus eight known asteroids | Burdanov et al. 2025 |
| 2024 Dec 27 | 2024 YR4 | ATLAS Chile | ATLAS; M. Micheli and international follow-up | Earth impact probability peaked at 3.1% on 18 Feb 2025, then fell below 10⁻⁴ | Micheli et al. 2026; Farnocchia et al. 2026 |
| 2025 May | 2017 OF201 announced | DECaLS archival detections; CFHT precovery; Magellan | Sihao Cheng, Jiaxuan Li, Eritas Yang | An extreme orbit (a ≈ 838 au) from archive alone | Cheng et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Jun 23 | Rubin’s first imagery | LSSTCam, 8.4 m telescope | Rubin Observatory | 2,104 new asteroids announced with the first images | NOIRLab 2025 |
| 2025 Jun 30 | Rubin Data Preview 1 | ComCam commissioning data; HelioLinC3D linking | Rubin Observatory team | 93 new main-belt asteroids in public data; the discovery pipeline open to review | Rubin 2026; Rubin DP1 |
| 2025 Jul 1 | 3I/ATLAS | ATLAS Chile; Rubin images from 21 June found later | ATLAS team; C. Chandler and the Rubin team | Third interstellar object | NASA; Chandler et al. 2025 |
| 2025 | Ammonite (2023 KQ14) | Subaru HSC FOSSIL; archival precovery to 2014 | Y.-T. Chen, P. S. Lykawka, Y. Huang, S.-Y. Wang and others | A fourth sednoid, perihelion 65.9 au, found at 71 au | Chen et al. 2025 |
| 2025 | Pan-STARRS distant-planet search | PS1 catalogues with per-exposure injections | M. Holman, K. Napier, M. Payne, J. Kurlander | Would have found 75,769 of 100,000 simulated distant planets | Holman et al. 2025 |
| 2025 | IRAS–AKARI and AKARI Planet Nine candidates | Pairs of far-infrared catalogues 23 years apart | T. L. Phan and others; A. Y.-A. Chen and others | Candidates that still need orbits | Phan et al. 2025; Chen et al. 2025b |
| 2025 Sep | Multi-year orbit stacking | Six years of ZTF; metric-guided nonlinear orbit bank | A. Geringer-Sameth, N. Golovich, K. Iwabuchi | Known bodies recovered blindly with 4.6 × 10⁹ trial orbits | Geringer-Sameth et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Sep | Shift-and-stack on detection catalogues | Thresholded detections instead of pixels | S. Stetzler, M. Jurić, P. Bernardinelli and others | About 30 times faster for 0.25 mag less depth | Stetzler et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Oct 25 – 2026 Jun 29 | Rubin operations, public alerts (24 Feb 2026), formal LSST start | LSSTCam | Rubin Observatory | The decade-long survey begins | Rubin RTN-011 |
| 2026 | Targeted parallax search for Planet Nine | Nearby-night pairs with a 0.8 m telescope | H. Socas-Navarro; I. Trujillo | A null result, with failure modes in crowded fields | Socas-Navarro & Trujillo 2026 |
| 2026 Feb | 2024 YR4 will miss the Moon | JWST NIRCam astrometry | J. de Wit, A. Rivkin, M. Micheli and others | A 2032 lunar impact ruled out | de Wit et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Apr | heliostack | GPU Keplerian stacking of 1,118 archival HST ACS images over 15 days | K. Napier, M. Holman, H. W. Lin, D. Gerdes, T. Ruch | Two new KBOs to 29.17 in the 2003 data; >10¹⁴ trajectories | Napier et al. 2026 |
| 2026 May | YOSO | Motion filter plus YOLO detector on DECam DEEP images | N. Pandey, C. Fuentes, P. Bernardinelli and others | Eleven new TNOs; fewer of the faintest than shift-and-stack | Pandey et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Jul 27 | Rubin Early Data Preview 2 | LSSTCam | Rubin Observatory | 299,819 known objects in the release | Rubin DP2 |
| 2026 Aug | First multi-opposition recoveries of Rubin TNOs | CFHT follow-up | C. Hemmann, B. Gladman, J. Obidowski, J.-M. Petit, J. J. Kavelaars | One extreme orbit held; two apparent ones became plutinos | Hemmann et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Sep | Ultra-faint TNOs with JWST | NIRCam shift-and-stack, learned vetting, linking | M. Eduardo, A. Morgan, W. Fraser, D. Trilling and others | 27 TNOs in 0.05 deg²; 40% threshold 28.8 in F150W2 | Eduardo et al. 2026 |
Exoplanets
| Year | Event | Method / instrument | People | Why it mattered | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | K-Stacker on real data | Keplerian recombination of VLT SPHERE epochs | H. Le Coroller, M. Nowak and others | Orbit-space stacking for direct imaging | Le Coroller et al. 2020 |
| 2020 | WD 1856+534 b candidate | TESS; ground and Spitzer follow-up | A. Vanderburg, S. Rappaport, S. Xu and others | A giant transiting a white dwarf | Vanderburg et al. 2020 |
| 2020 | Terrestrial-mass rogue planet candidate | OGLE and KMTNet microlensing | P. Mróz and others | Event timescale 41.5 minutes | Mróz et al. 2020 |
| 2021 | Habitable-zone occurrence | Kepler DR25 with completeness and reliability | S. Bryson and collaborators | 0.37–0.60 rocky habitable-zone planets per Sun-like star, depending on extrapolation | Bryson et al. 2021 |
| 2021 | Planet Hunters TESS | Public inspection of TESS light curves | N. Eisner, O. Barragán, C. Lintott and others | 90 new candidates, 73 of them single transits | Eisner et al. 2021 |
| 2021 | AnomalyFinder | Systematic search of KMTNet light curves | W. Zang and others | A homogeneous microlensing planet sample | Zang et al. 2021 |
| 2022 | Proxima d candidate | ESPRESSO | J. P. Faria and others | Semi-amplitude 39 cm/s, 0.26 Earth masses minimum | Faria et al. 2022 |
| 2022 | First JWST image of an exoplanet | NIRCam and MIRI coronagraphy of HIP 65426 b | A. Carter and others | A known planet imaged at about 10⁻⁵ contrast | Carter et al. 2023 |
| 2023 | Gaia DR3 orbital solutions | Gaia astrometry | B. Holl and others | 72 astrometric planet candidates, not confirmed planets | Holl et al. 2023 |
| 2024 | Gaia-guided interferometric detections | Gaia accelerations, then VLTI GRAVITY | T. Winterhalder and others | Eight of eight companions detected, seven new, mostly substellar | Winterhalder et al. 2024 |
| 2024 | Epsilon Indi Ab imaged | JWST MIRI | E. Matthews and others | A cold 6 Jupiter-mass planet around a nearby star | Matthews et al. 2024 |
| 2025 | Gaia-4 b | Gaia astrometric orbit with RV confirmation | G. Stefánsson and others | First secure planet discovered by Gaia astrometry, 11.8 Jupiter masses | Stefánsson et al. 2025 |
| 2025 | Super-Earths common in Jupiter-like orbits | KMTNet, 63 planets in 60 events | W. Zang, Y. K. Jung, J. Yee and others | A cold super-Earth population in the mass-ratio function | Zang et al. 2025 |
| 2025 | CETRA GPU transit search | GPU (RTX A5000) | L. Smith and others | GPU transit search; 2.6 s in the paper’s benchmark | Smith et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Jun | TWA 7 b candidate | JWST MIRI coronagraphy | A.-M. Lagrange and others | About 0.3 Jupiter masses: imaging reaches Saturn-like masses | Lagrange et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Jun | Kepler-725 c | Kepler transit timings; N-body grid | L. Sun, S. Gu, X. Wang and others | A temperate 10 Earth-mass planet inferred from timing alone | Sun et al. 2025 |
| 2025 Aug | Alpha Centauri A candidate | JWST MIRI coronagraphy | C. Beichman and others | Evidence for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star | NASA |
| 2025 Sep | 6,000 confirmed exoplanets | NASA Exoplanet Archive curation | Archive team and discovery collaborations | A catalogue milestone under evolving inclusion rules | NASA |
| 2025–2026 | Microlensing degeneracies in sensitivity | Simulated anomalies passed through the same model checks | Y. Shang, H. Yang and others | Sensitivity overestimated by 5–10% otherwise; 3.34 × 10⁵ CPU-hours | Shang et al. 2025 |
| 2026 | A Saturn-mass free-floating planet with a measured mass | Space and ground microlensing parallax | S. Dong, Z. Wu, Y.-H. Ryu and others | 0.22 Jupiter masses, unbound or on a very wide orbit | Dong et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Jul | Planetary-mass exosatellite evidence | VLT CRIRES+ RVs of the brown dwarf CD−35 2722 B | K. Hoy, A. Zurlo, P. Peña and others | About 0.9 Jupiter masses around a brown dwarf; competing models remain | Hoy et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Sep | Imaging limits TESS validation | 443 candidates with and without high-resolution imaging | M. Collier, S. Giacalone and others | 72% of validations fail without the imaging; 64 new planets | Collier et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Oct 7 | PALTA-1 b candidate | VLT FORS2 astrometry | J. Sahlmann and others | 0.54–0.77 Jupiter masses from ground astrometry | Sahlmann et al. 2026 |
| 2026 Oct 16 | 6,451 confirmed planets | NASA Exoplanet Archive snapshot | Archive team | Transits 4,785, radial velocity 1,204, microlensing 292, imaging 98 | NASA Exoplanet Archive |
The timeline stops at the date the research for this book was frozen. Gaia’s fourth data release, Rubin’s first full data release and NEO Surveyor are scheduled but have not happened, so they are not entries. What the next entries will look like is the subject of Chapter 42.
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