“University of Washington astronomer Eric Agol played a key role in the windfall of 715 new exoplanets announced by NASA Feb. 26. Agol was on a team that found seven of those worlds, all in orbit around the same star, Kepler-90. It’s the first planetary system with seven planets seen to transit, or cross in front of their host star.

Agol, colleague Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and co-authors discovered the multiple planets (though other teams published findings before them) and helped confirm the high likelihood that the grouping is in fact a planetary system. News reports note that an amateur astronomer assisted in identifying the seventh planet.”

Read the press release here.