imagine the number we would find if we actually point Kepler to somewhere other than Cygnus.
All of this just in that small corner!
It is exciting. The number of known extrasolar planets is pushing 800 now, not bad, and the first one wasn’t confirmed until twenty years ago. As technology improves and the buildout continues, it’s not unlikely that the number will grow tenfold in perhaps five years. Whereas it’s far more important to identify all the space debris that crosses Earth’s orbit, that kind of study can be done with radioastronomy on a low budget, and (as is necessary) distributed across all landmasses.