“This is a star pulling on a star,” he said as one came up.

He pointed to a small wiggle on another curve that suggested a second planet where there was already one. “This is frankly publishable now,” he said.

Another star, an old friend known as 16 Cygni B came up with a saw-toothed pattern of motion, the signature of an egg-shaped orbit. He recalled that he and Dr. Butler had been in his office at 4 a.m. when they first saw it — the fourth or fifth planet they had discovered — “and it’s still interesting.”

“Look at this beauty,” Dr. Marcy exclaimed. “This is Isaac Newton screaming with joy from his grave.” He continued with a chuckle: “This is my life. When we saw this, we were so excited. People didn’t realize planets could be in elliptical orbits.”

The thought brought him back to the days of being criticized.

“It feels like a black and white movie to me, really a horror film,” he said. “I was really distressed with myself.

“Kepler taught us that planets are common. We didn’t know that.”

If Mr. Petigura’s analysis was right, he said, the nearest Earthlike planets could be as close as 10 or 12 light-years away, within reach of a moderate-size telescope. “If you do T.P.F., you will not come up empty.” he said, referring to a Terrestrial Planet Finder. “You’ll have a handful of them. So we have our homework.”

By then the sky was getting cloudy in Hawaii. “Bad news, but this is astronomy,” Dr. Marcy said with a sigh as he went to look for bright stars that would punch through the clouds.

“One thing about having a big telescope,” he explained: “We can collect a lot of light through clouds.”

It was midnight when he moved on to the next star, one with five planets.

“This is a great thing,” he said. “I love this.” For him the night and the universe were young.