Less than 20 years after confirming the first planet beyond our own solar system, astronomers have sighted exoplanet No. 500, all of which are less massive than Jupiter -ranging between 15 and 50 percent of Jupiter’s mass– and the planets’ distances from Earth range from 58 light-years to 196 light-years.
The 500th find comes less than two months after another watershed moment — the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. And astronomers are sure to announce other big milestones soon, as data rolls in from instruments like NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space observatory.
The milestone was reached Friday (Nov. 19), according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, a database compiled by astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory. The new exo planet count now stands at 502 alien worlds.
The lists of extrasolar planets is unofficially maintained by Schneider and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which keeps a count called “PlanetQuest: New Worlds Atlas,” which currently lists 497 planets.
Kepler has already identified more than 700 “candidates” — stars possibly harboring alien planets — that await further observation and confirmation. A high percentage of these will probably pan out, according to Jenkins.
“Our false positive rate continues to be rather low,” he continued in his interview with space.com. “It appears to be below 20 percent. We’re starting to see the family portraits of these extrasolar systems. We’re getting a more complete picture of the distribution and frequency of planets beyond our solar system.”
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