BALTIMORE - The popular conception of planets around other stars involves strange worlds, all much larger than Jupiter on crazy paths in solar systems that look nothing like our own but within the planet-hunting community, that view has changed.

Recent discoveries, along with the cleaning up of a few long-held misconceptions, reveal a handful of solar systems that are not so strange after all. Things out there are beginning to look a lot more like things back home. Geoffrey Marcy, a University of California at Berkeley researcher widely recognized as this world's top planet hunter, set the record straight in an interview with SPACE.com last week.

"We're seeing characteristics that remind us of our own solar system, for sure," Marcy said.

At a meeting titled "Astrophysics of Life" here at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), other researchers said the trend, coupled with the known distribution of planet masses in our solar system, suggests twins of Jupiter -- both in size and orbital position -- will soon be found and that even Earth-like planets will be detected once technology allows.

"We should have good reason to expect to find [Earth-mass] planets," said Wesley Traub, a researcher at the Harvard -Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

So far, the only successful planet-detection method, which measures a wobble in a star caused by the gravity of its orbiting companion, cannot find worlds as small as Earth. Of the 85 properly documented extrasolar planets, the smallest is still more than 50 times as massive as our home planet.

Meanwhile, Marcy dropped a hint that his research team, which includes long-time colleague Paul Butler, might have detected the smallest extrasolar planet yet known.

"There's a star that has data consistent with a 30 Earth-mass planet, but it is not at all secure," Marcy said, cautious not to reveal details until new observations are made later this spring. "We need more data to be sure."

At the STScI meeting, Marcy delivered a state-of-the-search report:

• The popular conception that all extrasolar planets are incredibly huge is false, owing to impressions that stuck after early discoveries. In fact, only three or four have masses more than 11 times that of Jupiter. Yet nearly 30 are roughly equal to or less massive than Jupiter.
• The notion that most planets orbit extremely close to their host stars is dispelled by recent discoveries made as the detection method has been refined. While a high percentage of the first few discoveries involved tight orbits, the majority of planets found in the past three years reside at distances similar to that between the Sun and Earth or Mars.
• About 80 percent of all known extrasolar planets move in "quite elliptical orbits" not similar to the more circular paths traveled by planets in our solar system, Marcy said. However, that means 20 percent carve courses that are more familiar, including a handful that are nearly circular.

While the planet hunters have yet to find a Jupiter-mass planet at an orbital distance similar to Jupiter's, that discovery, too, should be just around the corner.

Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University studies the stars around which planets have been found. He explained that detecting a planet with an orbital period of 12-years -- similar to the time it takes Jupiter to go around the Sun -- would require collecting data over the course of a full orbit. With roughly 15 years of research under Marcy and his colleagues' belts, that discovery could be close at hand.

"I would not be surprised by an announcement any day now," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez is surprised that the venerable planet-hunting team has not already announced planets with orbits approaching Jupiter's. "They should have already announced eight- and ten-year periods," he said. "I don't know what's taking them so long."

Maybe they don't exist?

"We'll see," Gonzalez said with an optimistic grin.

Marcy said more data is needed to detect planets with 10- or 15-year orbits, but he thinks it's likely they exist.