The sun is a fairly ordinary star. In many respects it can be said to be middle class. The sun is accompanied by nine planetsat least nine planets. If the sun can have planets, it seems that other quite ordinary stars can have them too. Right now astronomers do not have any generally accepted evidence for extrasolar planets. A few alleged cases have been presented and are the subject of vigorous debate. That debate took a few new steps at a well-attended session of the recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Troy, N.Y. Evidence for extrasolar planets is difficult to get and easy to argue about, yet the attitude of astronomers to the basic question of whether extrasolar planets exist, if not to specific pieces of evidence, tends to be favorable. To quote David C. Black of the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led off the AAS session with a theoretical consideration of why extrasolar planets should be looked for, Most would vote yes. Sarah Lee Lippincott, director of Swarthmore College's Sproul Observatory, once remarked (of people in general, not only astronomers) that we don't like to think we're alone. That remark can be taken to refer to the bare existence of other planetary systems, to the presence of living beings on them or to both. In any of the senses it probably harmonizes with the feeling of most astronomers that the solar system ought not to be unique in the universe. Unique phenomena are difficult if not impossible for science to handle. Descending from the realm of generalized philosophy of science, astronomers can make a more specific argument against the uniqueness of the solar system, and Black reminded his audience of it: Nature likes to make astronomical objects in pairs and larger groups. Observation tells us that most stars are members of binary or larger systems. Observation tells us also that at least one planetary system-our own-exists. Suppose there is a continuum of sizes for companion bodies to stars. Some are stars themselves. Then comes a range of dark objects, some classified as stellar size, others getting down to planetary size. (Jupiter is conventionally called a planet, but in some respects can be called a failed star.) Finally the succession comes down to bodies the size of earth or Venus and ultimately even to such cosmic grit as the asteroids. One of the newest pieces of work reported at this session offers evidence for larger-than-planet-sized dark companions for stars. The evidence was obtained by a very new technique, infrared speckle interferometry. The observers, Donald McCarthy and Frank Low of the University of Arizona and Susan G. Kleinman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believe that the method will be useful for finding planet-sized companions too. Thus, two methods, astrometry and infrared speckle interferometry, now claim evidence of dark companions to stars. The third oft-mentioned method, Doppler shift spectroscopy, was the subject of a number of future plans, which, along with instrument designs, were presented at the session by several astronomers. Astrometry seems to be the oldest technique to be employed in these searches. It is based on the dynamics of a star with a companion. In such a system both objects actually revolve around their common center of gravity, or as the astronomers often say, the common barycenter. Over years all stars show a certain motion across the sky. If the star is traveling with a companion, the revolutions around the barycenter will add a certain wobble or oscillation to this motion. Thus even if the companion is invisible from