NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered a star system that has six confirmed planets-- the most in an alien system yet found. The planets orbit a Sun-like star 2,000 light years away. Five of them orbit that star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun, and their masses range from 2.3 times that of Earth to 13.5 times. All of them could possibly have been hot Jupiters at some point in the past, but their proximity to their star may have resulted in much of their atmospheres, and their masses, being burned away. The sixth planet in the system completes one orbit in 118 days, slightly less than half the orbital period of Venus.
The discovery is just one element of a massive release of Kepler data from NASA today. If all indicators of exoplanets in the data are eventually confirmed, this single release could double the number of exoplanets known, bringing the total to over a thousand.
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