Extrasolar Planets

In the past 200 years, people have asked, "Are there other solar systems?"  The answer came in 1992 when an extrasolar planet was discovered.  Due to the distance of these systems, mostly planets heavier than Earth have been discovered so far, with the most massive outweighing 15 Jupiters!  Extrasolar planets have been found orbiting around giant stars, white dwarfs, brown dwarfs and even pulsars (information on these objects here and here)!  A few systems have been confirmed two planets, and some hold up to 7.  Naturally, most have been gas giants, but some have been seen very close to their parent stars, the closest being only under .05 AU from the star.  Thousands of these mysterious bodies have been discovered, with hundreds more waiting to be confirmed.  To assist this search, Kepler (named after Johannes Kepler), a spacecraft launched in 2009, had a sole mission to detect these planets.  Who knows what mysteries lie on bodies beyond our solar system?