Even if you’re not a member, the Planetary Society should be something you should pay attention to as a space buff. If it wasn’t for them, we never would have seen this awesome image made by xkcd, which illustrates all 786 known planets in the Milky Way to scale.

At the rate that planets are being discovered, this picture will likely be outdated pretty quick. But when you think that the first planet outside our solar system was only discovered twenty years ago, the rate that we’re finding new planets is very exciting and that’s why it’s my favorite field of astronomy.

With 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and if there is the average of 1.5 planets per star…that’s a lot of planets out there. The more planets, the more chance for life.