How One Astronomer Became the Unofficial Exoplanet Record Keeper

In the past several days a number of news articles have touted the passage of a tidy astronomical milestone--the discovery of the 500th known planet outside the solar system. In the past 15 years, the count of those extrasolar worlds, or exoplanets, has climbed through single digits into the dozens and then into the hundreds. The pace of discovery is now so rapid that the catalogue of identified planets leaped from 400 to 500 entries in just over a year. [More]

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