Agencies : Washington,The Kepler space telescope science team has confirmed the discovery of 11 star systems piled with 26 exoplanets. With this latest revelation, the number of known multi-planetary star systems has just tripled and the list of confirmed planets beyond our solar system has doubled. “Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,” Discovery News quoted Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C as saying. “Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits,” Hudgins said. Although these stars may have nearly a number of planets each, but that is where the similarities to our own solar system end. The worlds in each of these star systems have very compact orbits -- the shortest orbital period (or “year”) is six days while the longest is just 143 days. In contrast, the orbital period of Mercury is 115 days. All of these worlds have an orbital distance closer than Venus is to the sun. The range of the recently discovered systems includes some, which are only 1.5 times the size of Earth, while others that are larger than Jupiter. Fifteen exoplanets are between Earth and Neptune in size, but further observations will be required to establish if any of them have a rocky surface like Earth, or a gaseous consistency like Neptune.Source: Indian Express
