The US space agency NASA has announced that 26 new planets spread across 11 solar systems have been discovered.
There is not any life on the planets as they are too near to their hosts stars.
They are laid closer to their star than it is from Sun to Venus, where the temperature is already 464 Celsius.
Planets have been found by the space telescope- Kepler.
Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters Doug Hudgins, said: ‘Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky. Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.”
In the NASA statement, Mr Hudgins said that all of the discoveries of planets are defined in four papers in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler mission has been established in March 2009 and is projected to last till November 2012 or longer.
It aims to find new planets similar to Earth which are orbiting near stars comparable to Sun.
The first planet,Kepler 22b, has been discovered in last December.
It is the first habitable planet outside solar system.
It is not clear if it is gaseous or rocky.
Planets similar to Kepler 22b have the right atmosphere, temperatue and are in the proper distance from their host star to maintain life.
By Agnieszka Bak and AFP
Picture courtesy of Philipp Salzgeber.
