Thanks to the dedicated efforts of planet hunters over the past decade and a half, we now know that the Galaxy is positively teeming with low-mass planets. In particular, the highly successful NASA Kepler mission has ushered us from the era of hunting to a time of plentiful gathering.

To meet this paradigm shift, we are designing and building a new observing facility dedicated to the detection of the Earth-like planets around nearby stars. The facility, named Project Minerva, is based on the concept of constructing a larger effective telescope aperture by combining many small, roboticized telescopes.

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This public lecture, associated with the 2012 Palomar Science Meeting, is presented by Caltech Astronomy and Caltech Optical Observatories.