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Proper names of planetary systems often follow common themes – for example, the planets of the star Copernicus are named after European astronomers. Proper names for planets outside of the Solar System – known as exoplanets – are chosen by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) through public naming contests known as NameExoWorlds.
There are eight planets within the Solar System; planets outside of the solar system are also known as exoplanets. As of 6 September 2024, there are 5,756 confirmed exoplanets in 4,297 planetary systems, with 963 systems having more than one planet. [1] Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope.
The stars with the most confirmed planets are the Sun (the Solar System's star) and Kepler-90, with 8 confirmed planets each, followed by TRAPPIST-1 with 7 planets. The 1007 multiplanetary systems are listed below according to the star's distance from Earth. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System, has three planets (b, c and d).
The first planet discovered in a system is given the designation "b" (the parent star is considered to be "a") and later planets are given subsequent letters. If several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size.
Astronomical naming conventions. In ancient times, only the Sun and Moon, a few stars, and the most easily visible planets had names. Over the last few hundred years, the number of identified astronomical objects has risen from hundreds to over a billion, and more are discovered every year. Astronomers need to be able to assign systematic ...
Extragalactic planet. An extragalactic planet, also known as an extragalactic exoplanet or an extroplanet,[1][2][3] is a star -bound planet or rogue planet located outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. Due to the immense distances to such worlds, they would be very hard to detect directly.
Size (left) and distance (right) of a few well-known galaxies put to scale. The following is a list of notable galaxies.. There are about 51 galaxies in the Local Group (see list of nearest galaxies for a complete list), on the order of 100,000 in the Local Supercluster, and an estimated 100 billion in all of the observable universe.
A planet in the Solar System beyond the asteroid belt, and hence refers to the gas giants. Pulsar planet: A planet that orbits a pulsar or a rapidly rotating neutron star. Rogue planet: Also known as an interstellar planet. A planetary-mass object that orbits the galaxy directly. Superior planets: Planets whose orbits lie outside the orbit of ...