That plethora allows astronomers to start drawing conclusions about how common various sorts of planets are.
This could change once future planet-hunting instruments have provided the first images of planets around other stars.
But these are the first images of planets outside the Solar System, or exoplanets as they are called.
It appears they are the roasted remains of planets that spent a period of time inside the outer layers of their star.
It senses the presence of planets by looking for a tiny "shadowing" effect when one of them passes in front of its parent star.
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In later series, we discover that Starfleet is more of a militaristic than an exploratory, entrepreneurial arm of the United Federation of Planets.
The light coming from them is so bright that it has, until now, overwhelmed the attempts of astronomers to find the chemical signatures of planets.
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But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one "Earth-like" planet.
These hot transits are those of planets in other solar systems.
So the question of how this mysterious trio of planets ended up where they are will, says Dr Noyes, give the theorists plenty to chew over.
One of the enduring mysteries of the Solar System is how the ordered network of planets orbiting the Sun spontaneously emerged form the chaos of space.
Astronomers have found scores of planets around other stars, mainly by searching for stars that wobble back-and-forth due to the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.
The Mauni Amavasya is a day when sun, moon, Venus and Mercury are in the zodiac of Capricorn, a rare but perfect alignment of planets, devotees believe.
When working, it splits light into its component colours, to reveal information about the chemical content, temperature and motion of planets, comets, stars, interstellar gas and galaxies.
But a new model that simulates the birth and evolution of planets shows that conditions need to be just, just right to get a solar system like ours.
And, remarks Dr Jayawardhana, even if the dust has stuck together into lumps, the lumps may be the size of planets or still only the size of golf balls.
Hoffman says his students at MIT are "champing at the bit" to get to Mars, where human beings could learn much more about the geology of planets than any robot could.
Mr. JACK LISSAUER (NASA): This is likely to be or plausibly the first rocky planet around a normal star other than the sun, and in that sense it's a class of planets like Earth.
Marcy and a team that includes Paul Butler of the Anglo-Australian Observatory are using the telescope to scan more than 400 stars for the characteristic "wobble" caused by the gravitational effect of planets on stars.
He led an international team of 42 scientists who spent six years surveying millions of stars at the heart of the Milky Way, in the most comprehensive effort yet to gauge the prevalence of planets in the galaxy.
It seems there are now going to be two kinds of planets: the real thing, like Earth and Mars and Jupiter, and then something called plutons, which are funny things that are kind of planets and kind of not planets.
Even though the suite of instruments for the E-ELT has yet to be finalized, ESO astronomer Joe Liske says the telescope will make observing time for cosmology, nearby galaxies, solar system studies and the burgeoning list of planets now known to circle other stars.
The ultimate goal, of course, is to let astronomers make a plausible estimate of the total number of planets in the galaxy, of the number that could conceivably support life, and of the fraction of those that could (at least in theory) sustain human colonists.
Much as I love the march of technology and innovation, I remain skeptical of the techno-optimists who are convinced that just around the corner is the technological solution to all of our problems, ushering in the singularity or, at the very least, the United Federation of Planets.
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And new software, plus the ability to vary the projected sizes and brightnesses of planets and moons, makes it possible to simulate the sky from anywhere in the solar system: to see earthrise from Mars, for example, or to watch Jupiter's moons rise and set from a vantage point just above the gas giant's cloud-tops.
Mr. ALAN STERN (Southwest Research Institute): And, you know, whereas we know of four terrestrial planets and four gas giants, we expect that there are hundreds if not thousands of these ice dwarfs, and so this class of planets which we have not yet reconnoitered is in reality the most populous class of planetary body in our solar system.
Secondly, the detection of multiple planets demolishes once and for all the lingering doubts of some astronomers that the single planets found around other stars are not planets at all, but small, faint components in otherwise conventional binary star systems.
But in a catalogue with hundreds of confirmed planets and thousands of planet candidates added since 1992, it is otherwise unremarkable - except for its proximity.
Measuring at two-thirds the size of our sun, this cosmic lantern is orbited by a total of five planets, three of which are too close to be habitable for life.
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