NASA’s Kepler telescope has been staring unblinkingly at a single patch of the sky for nearly three and a half years now. In that time, it’s discovered a huge number of planets in all sorts of sizes around numerous different stars. I could wax lyrical for hours about how amazing this is, because it really is amazing. But I won’t. In this case, I think I’m just going to let the data speak for themselves…

Note that many of these are still only candidates and are still waiting for confirmation. On the other hand, while waiting for these to be confirmed, chances are good that even more planetary candidates will be discovered! It’s an exciting time. I really do hope that EChO goes ahead, because I can’t think of anything more exciting than being able to look into the atmospheres of all of these worlds!

Images collected from Universe Today, The Conversation, SayPeople, and Wikipedia.