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Giant Planets Found in Stellar Suburbs
In the neighborhood that makes up our solar system, the giant planets-Jupiter and Saturn-reside in the chilly outer regions, while smaller planets tend to orbit closer to the sun. Our planet Earth lives in an intermediate tropical zone well-suited to life. Planet hunters have long wondered: Is this same type of planetary configuration common around other stars throughout our galaxy or are we unique?
The best way to find out is to do a census of the planetary denizens of the galaxy. Astronomers began such a census, called the California Legacy Survey, over three decades ago, and are now releasing a new batch of results. One pattern to emerge from the data is that giant planets tend to reside about 1 to 10 astronomical units (AU) from their host stars, a mostly icy region located beyond the temperate zone of a star. An AU is defined as the distance from Earth to our sun, or about 93 million miles.