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Monitoring star brightness dips revealed worlds orbiting distant stars. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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The Kepler Space Telescope discovered thousands of exoplanets

Monitoring star brightness dips revealed worlds orbiting distant stars

Launched in 2009, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope monitored over 150,000 stars simultaneously for tiny periodic dimmings caused by orbiting planets crossing their stellar discs. During its 9-year mission, Kepler identified over 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, demonstrating that planets outnumber stars in our galaxy.

PIA19333 Map of Exoplanets Found in Our Galaxy (Artist's Concept) — NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain · source

Where this comes from

NASA Science

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Tags: kepler, exoplanets, telescope

The Kepler Space Telescope discovered thousands of exoplanets: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Monitoring star brightness dips revealed worlds orbiting distant stars. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a space fact?: Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.