HD 10180: Richest Yet Planetary System Discovered

Explanation: Do other rich planetary systems exist? Our Solar System has the most planets of any known star, most probably because it is so hard to detect planets around other stars . Sensitive measurements, though, have now uncovered a slight but complex wobble of the Sun-like star HD 10180 indicating that it has at least five planets and possibly more, making it the richest extra-solar planetary system yet known. HD 10180's planets were discovered in years of data using the sensitive HARPS spectrograph attached to the ESO's 3.6-meter telescope in La Silla , Chile . The planetary system appears quite different than our Solar System , since all of HD 10180's discovered planets have Neptune -like masses but orbit inside the distance of Mars . An artist's depiction of flying into this system is shown in the above video . In the future, more sensitive data taken over longer time periods may extend the star-wobble detection technique into the realm of uncovering more distant and more Earth-like planets .