Every Exoplanet Orbiting Every Star Found By Kepler In One Image.
Enlarge. | Via. | Super High-Res.
Behold!, fellow astronomical dorkcore assholes like myself. The image above is every single exoplanet orbiting every single star found by the Kepler telescope. Go ahead, click it.
Wait, so like, what the fuck is going on in this image?
Jason Rowe via io9:
This picture shows every Kepler planetary candidate host star with its transiting companion in silhouette. The sizes of the stars and transiting companions are properly scaled. The colours of the stars are meant to represent how the eye would see the star outside of the Earths atmosphere. Stars have been properly limb darkened and the companions have been offset relative to one another to match the modeled impact parameter. Some stars will even show more than one planet!
How my fat head is translating it: it’s a picture that shows every possible planet that was maybe found that probably doesn’t exist. But it’s cool!