Includes bibliographical references (pages 163-169) and index.

Introduction. My brief history -- The human activity of watching the sky -- Asking why the planets move as they do -- Exoplanets and completing the Copernican revolution -- Stellar wobbles. At the telescope -- For every action -- Eccentric orbits -- Measuring precise radial velocities -- Stellar jitter -- Design considerations for a Doppler survey -- Concluding remarks -- Seeing the shadows of planets. Measuring and reading transit signals -- The importance of a/R* -- Transit timing variations -- Measuring the brightness of a star -- Radial velocities first, transits second -- Transit first, radial velocities second -- From close in to further out -- Planets bending space-time. The geometry of microlensing -- The microlensing light curve -- The microlensing signal of a planet -- Microlensing surveys -- Directly imaging planets. The problem of angular resolution -- The problem of contrast -- The problem of chance alignment -- Measuring the properties of an imaged planet -- The future of planet hunting. Placing the solar system in context -- Learning how planets form -- Finding life outside the solar system -- Giant planets as the tip of the iceberg -- The future of the Doppler method : moving to dedicated instrumentation -- The future of transit surveys -- The future of microlensing -- The future of direct imaging -- Concluding remarks.

An authoritative primer on the four key techniques that today's planet hunters use to detect the feeble signals of planets orbiting distant stars.--