In the nearly 20 years since Michel Mayer and Didier Queloz confirmed the first known exoplanet around 51 Pegasi, the number of known exoplanets has risen to over 1860 – and there are more to come. The Kepler space telescope, before being hobbled by mechanical failure, created a massive database of planet candidates orbiting the 150,000 stars it looked at – some 4,175 in fact – which are still being checked. Eight new planets were confirmed just last week.
We can be sure there are a lot more out there. Kepler scanned just 0.28 percent of the sky in the direction of Draco, out to 3000 light years. In that patch, it could only detect planets whose orbits cross the disk of their star from our viewpoint. Other planetary systems, tilted at different angles, aren’t detectable by the transit method. But they will be there. And now the hot question – how many planets…
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Viv Drewa - The Owl Lady 