On the 15 April 1999 at a press conference, astronomers from the San Francisco State University, and from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Massachusettes, USA, revealed the discovery of another complete solar system. Upsilon Andromedae is the proud owner of 3 giant planets.
Planet 1 (the one closest to the sun) is about three-quarters the mass of Jupiter, orbiting its star in around 5 days. Planet 2 is larger, being twice the mass of Jupiter and takes 242 days to complete its orbit. Planet 3 is approximately 4 times larger than Jupiter and takes about 1500 days to orbit, about 4 Earth years.
This proves that planetry formations around stars are not just for our 'lucky' solar system but do occur elsewhere. What could this mean for other possible planetoids orbiting other stars? They too may have harder to detect planets with them, the more planets within a solar system the greater (however remote), the chance of other 'life' existing outside our own system??????