You might have wondered, looking up at the night sky, how many other beings are out there looking back at us. Help is at hand. Using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, New Scientist has made an interactive map illustrating the stars that we might expect to host roughly Earth-sized, potentially habitable planets.
Explore the galactic map: "How many Earths?"
The grid of squares to the right represents the patch of sky that Kepler stared at for nearly four years. So far, the space telescope – nicknamed the Planet Hunter – has confirmed the existence of 151 exoplanets and identified more than 3500 strong candidates.
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