Nearly 400 Planets Discovered Outside Our Solar System

An artist's rendering image released to Reuters on October 19, 2009 shows an exoplanet 6 times the Earth-size circulating around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. Credit: REUTERS/ESO/L. Calcada/Handout

When I was a little boy, I used to love astronomy. I still get excited to read stories like this:

Astronomers using a spectrograph on the ESO’s 3.6 meter telescope in La Silla, Chile have discovered 32 new planets orbiting other suns. 32! The new planets push the number of known planets outside our solar system. or exoplanets, to nearly 400. The planets range in size from about five times the size of Earth to five times the size of Jupiter.

More details after the link.