This article neatly illustrates something I find interesting: the biases of the various methods of detecting exoplanets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_

This article neatly illustrates something I find interesting: the biases of the various methods of detecting exoplanets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanet... Direct imaging more easily detects massive planets that orbit far away from their star. Every one of the planets that orbit HR8799 (that we've detected) are farther out than Saturn, and many times heavier than Jupiter. On the other hand, the transit and and radial velocity methods work better for planets that are closer to their star, and with radial planes that are edge on to us. On the third hand, with the astromery method, it helps for the orbital plane to be face on to us, so we can detect the wobble in the host star! For all these methods, it helps if the star is both small and dim. The only way we'll find out if Rigel A (~120,000x brighter than Sol) hosts a planet is if we send a probe there.