Amazing Exoplanets

Planets beyond our solar system are called ‘exoplanets’ and range in size from gas giants to small rocky planets.

Not only that, but our galaxy, the Milky Way, is the dense stream of stars that streams across the sky on the darkest and brightest nights. Its spiralling expanse contains at least 100 billion stars, including our Sun. And if each of those stars has not just one planet, but, like ours, a whole system of them, then the number of planets in the galaxy is truly astronomical: we are already approaching the trillions.

DID YOU KNOW...

The first exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s, but the first to appear on the scene was 51 Pegasi b, a ‘hot Jupiter’ orbiting a Sun-like star 50 light years away. The decisive year was 1995. Since then we have discovered thousands more.