Stars and planets through time

While we have detected over 4000 planets around old main-sequence stars like our Sun, we have only discovered a handful of planetary systems around young stars with ages less than a few hundred million years. These young planetary systems are very important, however, as they directly link our theories of planet formation and early evolution to the older exoplanet

population. In doing so, they offer important new insights into some of the key outstanding questions in exoplanet research. Two such questions are: (i) how do planetary systems form and evolve into the diverse population that we observe? And (ii) how does early stellar activity affect subsequent planet habitability?