Mr. Spock: Has the Vulcan Planet of Star Trek been found?

An illustration of the artist of what could be the super-Earth found around the orange star HD 26965 (also known as 40 Eridani A). The newly discovered exoplanet is compared to the fictional Vulcan planet because Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry said the star was the ideal candidate to welcome Vulcan, Spock's birthplace.

The star TRAPPIST-1, an ultra-cool dwarf, has seven planets the size of the Earth in orbit.

For the first time, eight planets were found in orbit around another star, in connection with our solar system for the most known planets around a single star. The Kepler-90 system is in the Draco constellation, more than 2,500 light-years away from Earth.

The illustration of this artist shows the exoplanet Ross 128b, with its red dwarf host star in the background. The planet is only 11 light-years away from our solar system. It is now the second closest temperate planet after Proxima b.

WASP-121b, located 880 light-years away, is considered a hot planet similar to Jupiter. It has a mass and radius larger than Jupiter, which makes it "more inflatable". If WASP-121b was closer to its host star, it would be torn by the gravity of the star.

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope team has identified 219 other candidates for the planet, 10 of which are close to Earth and located in the habitable zone of their stars.

Welcome to the KELT-9 system. The host star is a hot-spinning type A star that is about 2.5 times more massive and almost twice as hot as our sun. The hot star blew up its nearby planet KELT-9b with massive amounts of radiation, leading to a temperature of 7800 degrees Fahrenheit, warmer than most stars and only 2000 degrees cooler than the sun.

The concept of this artist shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet revolving around an incredibly weak star at 13,000 light-years away from us. It's an "iceball" planet with temperatures reaching minus -400 degrees Fahrenheit.

LHS 1140b is located in the liquid water zone surrounding its host star, a small red star named LHS 1140. The planet weighs about 6.6 times the mass of the Earth and passes in front of LHS 1140. The blue representation atmosphere that the planet may have preserved.

Conceptual image of an artist from the surface of the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f. Among the seven exoplanets discovered in orbit around the ultra-quiet dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, this one could be the most adapted to life. Its size is similar to that of the Earth, it is a little cooler than the temperature of the Earth and is in the habitable zone of the star, which means that liquid water (and even the oceans) could be find on the surface. The proximity of the star gives the sky a salmon hue and the other planets are so close that they appear in the sky, much like our own moon.

Artistic conception of the binary system with three giant planets discovered, where one star hosts two planets and the other the third. The system represents the smallest binary separation in which the two stars host planets never observed.

The print of this artist shows the planet Proxima orbiting around the dwarf red star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our solar system.

The impression of this artist shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b.

An artist rendering shows Earth-size exoplanets, TRAPPIST-1b and 1c, in a rare double transit event, as they pass their red dwarf ultracool star, allowing Hubble to take a look at their atmosphere.

On a new discovery of 104 exoplanets, astronomers found four species of similar size orbiting a dwarf star. Two of them have the potential to support life. The gear depicted in this illustration is NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which has confirmed the existence of thousands of exoplanets.

The print of this artist shows a view of the three-star system HD 131399 near the giant planet orbiting the system. Located about 320 light-years from Earth, the planet is about 16 million years old, making it also one of the youngest exoplanets ever discovered.

An artistic impression of the planet Kepler-1647b, almost identical to Jupiter in size and mass. The planet should be similar in appearance. But it is much warmer: Kepler-1647b is in the habitable zone.

HD-106906b is a gas planet 11 times more massive than Jupiter. The planet is believed to have formed in the center of its solar system, before being sent to the edges of the region by a violent gravitational event.

Kepler-10b orbits at a distance more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own sun. Daytime temperatures exceed 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit), which is warmer than lava flows on Earth.

This Jupiter-like planet in the HD-188753 system, 149 light-years from Earth, has three suns. The main star is similar to our own Sun. The system has been compared to the home planet of Luke Skywalker, Tatooine, in "Star Wars".

Kepler-421b is an exoplanet in transit of the size of Uranus with the longest known year, as it revolves around its star once every 704 days. The planet orbits a K-type orange star, colder and darker than our Sun and located about 1000 light-years from Earth in the Lyra constellation.

Astronomers have discovered two planets less than three times the size of the Earth orbiting sun-like stars in an overcrowded star cluster about 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The design of this artist shows a hypothetical planet with two moons orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star. The majority of stellar neighbors closest to the sun are red dwarfs.

Kepler-186f was the first terrestrial sized planet validated to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. This area is located at a distance from the star where liquid water could gather on the surface of the planet.

Kepler-69c is a very large planet similar to Venus. The planet is in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

The Kepler-444 system was formed when the Milky Way was only 2 billion years old. The tight system is home to five planets varying in size, the smallest being comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest in Venus, orbiting the sun in less than 10 days.

This artistic concept image compares Earth left with Kepler-452b, which is about 60% larger. The two planets orbit a star of type G2 of about the same temperature; However, the star that hosts Kepler-452b is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun.