<p>Not a stupid question at all, until about 10 years ago no one in the world knew the answer to this!</p>
<p>The first planets orbiting another stellar object were only discovered in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12_B" rel="noreferrer">1992</a> (lower than Earth mass, orbiting a pulsar) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b" rel="noreferrer">1995</a> (Gas giant, orbiting a sun-like star). Prior to that, many companions of sub-stellar masses were known, but improvements in technology only allowed those to be discovered around the 90's via timing-delays and radial velocity fluctuations.</p>
<p>Then, first exoplanet survey missions were developed (survey = mass discovery as opposed to single discovery), which are needed to answer the question of 'how many planets per star'?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoRoT" rel="noreferrer">CoRot</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_space_telescope" rel="noreferrer">Kepler</a> were two missions pioneering this by looking at transits of planets in front of their stars (i.e. shadows), with major data releases around 2008 and 2012.<br />
Since then, we know that on average there is a minimum of <a href="https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/occurrence_rate_papers.html" rel="noreferrer">one planet per star orbiting it</a>.</p>
<p>It is currently difficult to say anything more specific than this. We know that there are systems of multiple planets out there, such as the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1" rel="noreferrer">Trappist-1</a> system with 7(!) of them. But that was a lucky find, and generally it is harder to find systems with more planets, because a) they have to be orbitally aligned for transit method to detect them and b) the farther away, the harder it is for transit and radial velocity surveys to find them.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-03T14:57:05.137Z
Thank you for the answer. Clear and concise and much appreciated
Nicola Ashworth
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-04T00:54:33.543Z
@NicolaAshworth Feel free to accept the answer..
AtmosphericPrisonEscape
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-03T12:47:46.920Z
2022-02-03T12:47:46.920Z
AtmosphericPrisonEscape
<p>This will sound like a idiotic question so apologies if I make you want to roll your eyes but... so we look into our night sky and we see the stars, does each of the stars we see have their own version of our solar system? Are they circulated by planets of some kind? So the pin prick of light we can see in our sky is the equivalent of our sun for instance? I've tried googling this but I'm still confused! Thank for to whoever is patient enough to answer :)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-05T05:08:08.427Z
Start with Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_system
Nilay Ghosh
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-06T10:19:36.717Z
I’m voting to close this question because it lacks effort. A simple Google search could have answered the question.
Nilay Ghosh
<solar-system>
Do Stars other than Sun, have its own solar system ? How different are those from our Solar system?
Nicola Ashworth
# Do Stars other than Sun, have its own solar system ? How different are those from our Solar system?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-02-03)

This will sound like a idiotic question so apologies if I make you want to roll your eyes but... so we look into our night sky and we see the stars, does each of the stars we see have their own version of our solar system? Are they circulated by planets of some kind? So the pin prick of light we can see in our sky is the equivalent of our sun for instance? I've tried googling this but I'm still confused! Thank for to whoever is patient enough to answer :)

**Tags:** solar-system

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Start with Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_system  
> **username_1**: I’m voting to close this question because it lacks effort. A simple Google search could have answered the question.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2022-02-03. Score: 5

Not a stupid question at all, until about 10 years ago no one in the world knew the answer to this!

The first planets orbiting another stellar object were only discovered in [1992](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1257%2B12_B) (lower than Earth mass, orbiting a pulsar) and [1995](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51_Pegasi_b) (Gas giant, orbiting a sun-like star). Prior to that, many companions of sub-stellar masses were known, but improvements in technology only allowed those to be discovered around the 90's via timing-delays and radial velocity fluctuations.

Then, first exoplanet survey missions were developed (survey = mass discovery as opposed to single discovery), which are needed to answer the question of 'how many planets per star'?
[CoRot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoRoT) and [Kepler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_space_telescope) were two missions pioneering this by looking at transits of planets in front of their stars (i.e. shadows), with major data releases around 2008 and 2012.  
Since then, we know that on average there is a minimum of [one planet per star orbiting it](https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/occurrence_rate_papers.html).

It is currently difficult to say anything more specific than this. We know that there are systems of multiple planets out there, such as the famous [Trappist-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAPPIST-1) system with 7(!) of them. But that was a lucky find, and generally it is harder to find systems with more planets, because a) they have to be orbitally aligned for transit method to detect them and b) the farther away, the harder it is for transit and radial velocity surveys to find them.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Thank you for the answer. Clear and concise and much appreciated  
> **username_2**: @username_0 Feel free to accept the answer..  

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