Question: How many Solar Systems have you found?

Phil Sutton answered on 9 Mar 2017:

I unfortunately have found zero solar systems myself. My research focuses on how these new systems might come to exist and form than the finding of them. The astronomical community though have discovered over 3500 planets around other stars. Nearly a quarter of those are in multiple planet systems with up to 9 (not all confirmed yet) planets in type of solar system. As we now know that most stars are born in binary and triple systems this means there are also a lot of planets orbiting multiple stars.

When it comes to discovering new solar systems you will find that it will be a large group of astronomers all working together. They will typically use large telescopes and spacecraft to do this, meaning large projects are used to find these planets. We have survey missions running that monitor stars over long periods of time looking for either a wobble caused by planets graviationally tugging on them or a dip in brightness as a planet passes in front of the star. Naturally its rare now for these types of discoveries to be credited to a single scientist in astronomy.