Dear Jack:

On Wednesday, October 17, 2012 11:20:08 AM UTC-7, wrote:
....
I'd like to know why they have just found a
planet at Alpha Centauri, our nearest star,

Not the nearest, just "very near".

when they have been searching the skies for
years and have found 600 or so planets (iirc).
it must've been the first place they looked,
mustn't it? Strikes me as odd.

There are 3 or 4 methods involved, and only recently have they become more accurate.

If the Earth is very near the stellar systems's ecliptic plane, then we have a much better chance of detection (regardless of method).

If the planet is massive, we have another very good chance of detection.

Beyond this, we didn't even know for sure there was a massive object in trojan with the Earth until very recently, and we had no idea Pluto had at least 5 moons until we went out there.

Not really that odd, that you don't know what is what, until you really start looking... then sharpen your tools, and look some more. Who is paying money to know these things, because the instrumentation isn't free, and there is significant time involved in analysis?

David A. Smith