So far astronomers have discovered more than 5,535 exoplanets, or planets that don’t reside in our solar system. However, that number has now just ticked up again, after researchers noticed some new ones tucked away in old Kepler mission data.
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00:00 So far, astronomers have discovered 5,535 exoplanets, or planets that don't reside,
00:10 in our solar system.
00:11 However, that number has now just ticked up again, after researchers noticed some new
00:15 ones tucked away in old Kepler mission data.
00:17 The Kepler mission ended its nine-year mission of planet searching way back in 2018, but
00:22 there was so much cosmic information included, researchers are still pouring through it today.
00:26 And among that data, in a star system 4,670 light years away called Kepler-385, they just
00:33 found 7 new ones.
00:34 A couple of the planets were already confirmed during the Kepler mission proper back in 2014,
00:39 however the rest have now been confirmed as well.
00:41 Kepler-385 is of interest to astronomers because of its similarity to our own system.
00:46 First, its central star is only 10% larger and 5% hotter than our own.
00:51 It's also one of the few planetary systems that has more than 6 orbiting planets, just
00:55 like ours which has 8.
00:56 Many of the planets in Kepler-385 are also rocky, including its innermost two, which
01:01 are also only a little bit bigger than Earth.
01:03 Still, that doesn't mean any of those planets are habitable.
01:06 All seven of them receive more heat from their central star than any single one in our system,
01:11 including Mercury.
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