1 / 9 100,000 Cosmic Dots -- All Stars-Suns, With Planets Too Small To See

We begin here with a LOT of cosmic dots -- about 100,000 of them. Hubble Space Telescope snapped this 2009 image of a panoramic colorful assortment of 100,000 stars in the core of a giant star cluster called Omega Centauri -- which is just one of about 200 star clusters in our Milky Way galaxy. According to NASA project scientist and planet-hunter Natalie Batalha, "Every star in the sky has at least one planet, so instead of seeing stars in the sky, we're looking at other solar systems."

NASA / ESA / Hubble SM4 ERO Team