ErinSpace
Exploring
Exoplanets
Use these controls to explore exoplanet data from the Open Exoplanet Catalog.
Choose an option from the drop-down menus below to get started.
Once you have a graph, hover over each point to see the planet's name and a description!
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| y-axis | |
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Guide
There's a lot of terminology on this page - here are some quick explanations
| Exoplanet | Short for "extra-solar planet"; a planet going around a star other than our Sun |
| [M Jupiter] [R Jupiter] | As a point of reference, Astronomers usually compare an exoplanet's mass and radius to Jupiter |
| Period | The amount of time (in Earth days) that the planet takes to go around its star |
| Semimajor axis | A measure of how far away the planet orbits from its star. |
| [AU] | 1 AU is the distance the Earth is from the Sun - used as a point of reference when measuring a semimajor axis |
Research Questions!
With just a little exploration, you can answer all sorts of interesting questions
| Which exoplanet in the dataset has the highest mass? | |
| What year did exoplanet discovery really take off? When do planets discovered using the Kepler space telescope start showing up? How did the mass of planets that we were able to discover change over time? | |
| What's the average semimajor axis for planets discovered? Are there any planets that are orbiting around their stars about the same distance as Earth? (1 AU or 1e+0 on the axes...). | |
| How has the average semimajor axis of discovered planets changed over time? What does that say about exoplanet finding techniques? |