1776

As of this writing there are 1,776 known exoplanets. They are distributed in 1082 planetary systems. In this video, all of the exoplanetary systems are presented to scale, in a simulated flyby. The systems are also organized by date of confirmation, so you can see how planetary discovery really took off in recent years. Exoplanet discovery has become so commonplace that we only talk about new discoveries if they are Earth-like or potentially habitable.

In many ways we’ve become a victim of our own success. We’re constantly discovering entirely new planets, and the attitude tends to be “Ho, hum. Another one. Add it to the list…”