Host Stars and How Their Compositions Influence Exoplanets

Though distant and seemingly unreachable, planets outside the Solar System, or exoplanets, have captivated the imagination of scientists and stargazers alike. With more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanet detections to date, it has become apparent that the Solar System—with multiple small, rocky planets interior to the larger gaseous planets—is not the only possible architecture for planetary systems. For example, some systems have “hot-Jupiters” where Jupiter-sized planets orbit very close to their host star (at distances comparable to the Sun–Mercury separation, e.g., Dawson and Johnson 2018). There are also planets that orbit two stars at the same time—much like Luke Skywalker’s...