The discovery of dozens of new "exoplanets" was reported Monday at a meeting of astronomers at the Hawaii Convention Center.
Attendees at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society heard about the discovery of 28 new planets outside our own solar system, raising the total number of known exoplanets 12 percent to 236.
These bodies, previously too distant for Earthbound astronomers to see, have been spotted in part by using the Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea.
Jason Wright and John Asher Johnson of the University of California Berkeley reported the new exoplanets and said they're getting better at finding them, spotting smaller gas giants than they could see before.
"We're just now getting to the point where, if we were observing our own solar system from afar, we would be seeing Jupiter," Wright said.
The California and Carnegie Planet Search team is headed by Geoffrey Marcy of UC Berkeley and also includes Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Steve Vogt of UC Santa Cruz. Discoveries have also been made or confirmed by the Anglo-Australian Planet Search team, headed by Chris Tinney of the University of New South Wales and Hugh Jones of the University of Hertfordshire, and by Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, Shannon Patel of UC Santa Cruz and Simon O'Toole of the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
Several of these scientists have published discoveries over the past year but the Honolulu conference Monday was the first time they all presented together.
The Keck Observatory, which employs more than 200 on the Big Island, has played a pivotal role in the discovery of planets beyond our local solar system. It is one of several observatories atop Mauna Kea.
A small number of technicians actually work on the top of the mountain, which is more than 13,000 feet high, while the actual astronomers work in Waimea-Kamuela (if working with Keck) or Hilo (if working with some other Mauna Kea facilities) or get telescope data sent via Internet2 to universities in other parts of the world.
