exoplanet discovery archive · 1992 – 2017
Scroll the lens through two and a half decades of discovery. Each dot is a confirmed exoplanet, plotted by orbital period and radius. Planets we’ve seen clearly hold still. Planets with missing data flicker, we know they’re there, but we don’t have all their data.
This catalog draws from a comprehensive archive of 3,500+ exoplanets with discoveries from 1992 to 2017. Each entry records orbital mechanics, planetary size, host star properties, discovery method, and surface temperature where known.
Each dot is a confirmed exoplanet, plotted by orbital period and radius. Planets we’ve seen clearly hold still. Planets with missing data flicker, we know they exist, but their full story is unwritten. Hover any dot to inspect it.
Next to thelens sits a scrollable discovery timeline. Drag up or down to move through years. The lens will react to the timeline scrolling and show you the planets based on the discovery year selected.
Giant gas planets orbiting extremely close to their stars, known as "Hot Jupiters", are far more common around stars with high metal content (metallicity). This provides strong evidence for the core accretion model of planet formation, where heavy elements are needed to rapidly build planet cores before the stellar gas dissipates.
All confirmed exoplanets are plotted by discovery method, with our own Solar System planets highlighted in white. If an alien civilization used our current technology to look at our Solar System, they would not be able to detect Earth. Our home planet is too small and too far from the Sun to be seen with our current instruments—meaning the universe could be full of Earths that remain invisible to us.
Only planets with a measured radius are shown, radius requires a transit, so this view is intrinsically transit-heavy.
This chart shows the fill rate across 25 different planetary and stellar attributes in the catalog. While basic metadata like the discovery year and method are 100% complete, critical physical properties quickly thin out. Highlighted in red are parameters with critical data gaps (under 50% completeness)—such as the planet's age (ageGyr), which is recorded for less than 1% of all discovered worlds.