Categories: Extrasolar PlanetsMissions

Orrery of Kepler’s Exoplanets

Here’s a terrific visualization of all the multiple-planet systems discovered by the Kepler spacecraft as of February 2, 2011. The planets’ orbits go through the entire 3.5 year mission. The different colors represent different sized planets — “hot” colors are the big planets, cooler colors are the smaller ones, relative to the other planets in the system.

And the creator (dfabrycky ) also put together another visualization of just the small systems, too:

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/