With thousands of confirmed exoplanets found so far, astronomers are starting to see some trends. For example, orbital eccentricity. For smaller Earth-like planets, astronomers have found that they tend to have nearly circular orbits, while giant planets, Neptune-sized and above, are four times more likely to have elliptical orbits. This hints that small and large planets have different formation pathways.

Small and large planets have significantly different upbringings

UCLA astrophysicists have made discoveries about the orbit shapes of exoplanets.

UCLA (newsroom.ucla.edu)