Not so long ago, humanity lived in a universe with only a small number of known planets, all of them orbiting our Sun. But a new raft of discoveries marks a scientific high point: More than 5,000 planets are now confirmed to exist beyond our solar system.
The planetary odometer turned on March 21, with the latest batch of 65 exoplanets – planets outside our immediate solar family – added to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive records exoplanet discoveries that appear in peer-reviewed, scientific papers, and that have been confirmed using multiple detection methods or by analytical techniques.
This artist’s concept is of a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the nearby star Epsilon Eridani, located 10.5 light-years away from Earth.
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Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)