BALTIMORE, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- NASA's Hubble space telescope has found 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central area of the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers say Hubble looked farther than has ever successfully been searched for extrasolar planets. Hubble peered at 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of our galaxy 26,000 light-years away. That is one-quarter the diameter of the Milky Way's spiral disk.
When extrapolated to the entire galaxy, Hubble's data provides strong evidence for the existence of approximately six billion Jupiter-sized planets in the Milky Way, NASA said.
Five of the newly discovered planets represent a new extreme type of planet not found in any nearby searches. Dubbed Ultra-Short-Period Planets, the worlds whirl around their stars in less than one Earth day.
"Discovering the very short-period planets was a big surprise," said team leader Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "Our discovery also gives very strong evidence that planets are as abundant in other parts of the galaxy as they are in our solar neighborhood."
The discovery is detailed in the current issue of the journal Nature.
