Number of Exo-Planets Now Tops 1000!

Tuckerfan · Oct 23, 2013

11 of them are roughly the size of Earth.

exoplanets discovered thus far, and now it’s official: the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia now includes more than 1,000! (1,010, to be exact.)

21 years after the first planets beyond our own Solar System were even confirmed to exist, it’s quite a milestone!

The milestone of 1,000 confirmed exoplanets was surpassed on October 22, 2013 after twenty-one years of discoveries. The long-established and well-known Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia now lists 1,010 confirmed exoplanets.

Not all current exoplanet catalogs list the same numbers as this depends on their particular criteria. For example, the more recent NASA Exoplanet Archive lists just 919. Nevertheless, over 3,500 exoplanet candidates are waiting for confirmation.

The first confirmed exoplanets were discovered by the Arecibo Observatory in 1992. Two small planets were found around the remnants of a supernova explosion known as a pulsar. They were the surviving cores of former planets or newly formed bodies from the ashes of a dead star. This was followed by the discovery of exoplanets around sun-like stars in 1995 and the beginning of a new era of exoplanet hunting.

(The first exoplanets to be confirmed were two orbiting pulsar PSR B1257+12, 1,000 light-years away. A third was found in 2007.)

Exoplanet discoveries have been full of surprises from the outset. Nobody expected exoplanets around the remnants of a dead star (i.e. PSR 1257+12), nor Jupiter-size orbiting close to their stars (i.e. 51 Pegasi). We also know today of stellar systems packed with exoplanets (i.e. Kepler-11), around binary stars (i.e. Kepler-16), and with many potentially habitable exoplanets (i.e. Gliese 667C).
Click to expand...

(bolding mine)

Paladin · Oct 23, 2013

In an observatory light-years from Earth...

Ql'Gar: The observations are confirmed, in addition to the gas giants orbiting that yellow star, there are several interior rocky planets.

Ngth'U: Fascinating! Do any of them look promising for life?

Ql'Gar: The innermost one is a little toasty. The fourth one is cold and barren. The second one is promising; its atmosphere is dense with life-giving carbon dioxide.

Ngth'U: What about that third one? Is it...is it...BLUE?

Ql'Gar: Yeah, mostly. Much of its surface is covered by oceans of--get this--liquid water.

Ngth'U: Yikes! You could get dissolved going near that stuff...

Ql'Gar: It gets worse. Spectroscopy shows the atmosphere has a large oxygen component.

Ngth'U: Great, so it's dissolve or corrode. What a hellhole that little blue planet must be!
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Number of Exo-Planets Now Tops 1000!

Tuckerfan BMF

Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

Log in or Sign up

Number of Exo-Planets Now Tops 1000!

Tuckerfan BMF

Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

Useful Searches