Exoplanet Discoveries

Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars that are not our sun.

They help us understand possible environments for other forms of life. These two visualizations, built using R, show how exoplanet detection has changed since scientists discovered the first planets orbiting other star systems in the mid-1990s. Each point represents a confirmed exoplanet, with colors indicating the discovery method used and point size representing planet mass. As detection methods have become more sensitive, we are able to detect exoplanets farther and farther away, especially via the transit method (light dims as exoplanets pass in front of their star) or the microlensing method (where light from extrasolar stars and planets is bent due to gravity of objects in space). These two images show the same data with different scales.