PASADINA, California: Our vast universe contains countless galaxies, billions of suns and other amazing objects. There are many planets outside the solar system called exoplanets and now their number has reached 5000.
But there are still billions upon billions of planets that may be similar to our Earth, and the task of discovering and identifying them remains.
This week, astronomers announced that 65 planets had recently been observed by the Kepler space telescope, bringing their number to 5005, a significant milestone. They also have a cluster of five planets orbiting a red dwarf star called K2 384.
Experts have named some of the planets Super Earth and Mini Neptune, as well as giant planets like Jupiter in the solar system. But in this catalog, 30% are large planets like Jupiter and Saturn, some are icy like Neptune and Uranus and some are solid rocky planets called Super Earth. We rarely find planets like Earth and Mars.
The first planet was discovered in 1992. Then in 2009 the number of planets increased rapidly with the Kepler telescope and it helped us to find more than 60% of the total planets. The TESS telescope then applied the identification and discovery of the planets.
But Jessie Christian Sun, an expert on NASA's Exoplanet Count, says 4,900 of the 5,000 are a few thousand light-miles from Earth. "If we talk about this small area in the vicinity, it is estimated that there will be 100 to 200 billion more planets and that is enough to blow our minds," Jesse said.
Experts are hopeful that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will further assist in this task, and that the James Webb Space Telescope will also be able to find more new planets in the far corners of the universe.
