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Thousands of Exoplanets Orbiting a Single Star

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Video of the Week #76, January 16th, 2013:

Worlds: The Kepler Planet Candidates from Alex Parker on Vimeo.


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From:Beautiful Video Imagines the Thousands of Known Exoplanets Orbiting a Single Star by Michael Moyer at Observations. Source:Alex Parker/Kepler/NASA This beautiful animation requires a bit of an introduction. It shows 2299 transiting planet candidates found by NASA's Kepler mission so far. These candidates were detected around 1770 unique stars, but are animated in orbit around a single star. They range in size from 1/3 to 84 times the radius of Earth. Colors represent an estimate of equilibrium temperature, red indicates warmest, and blue / indigo indicates coldest candidates. Watching in full screen + HD is recommended, so you can see even the smallest planets!