The Incredible Variety of Extraterrestrial Worlds

The Incredible Variety of Extraterrestrial Worlds
Exoplanets (or extrasolar planets) are planets beyond our own solar system: they orbit a star other than the Sun. Nearly 2000 exoplanets have been discovered since 1988, mostly with NASA’s Kepler space telescope. It has intensified interest in the search for extraterrestrial life.

This new poster shows over 500 extrasolar planets and demonstrates how much they vary. The visualization, created by graphic artist and writer Martin Vargic from Slovakia, is based on the estimated radius and temperature of the planets, however other factors, such as density, age or stellar metallicity were also taken into consideration.

All the various known classes of exoplanets are shown on the graphic, such as super-Earths, hot Jupiters, hot Neptunes, water worlds, gas dwarfs or superdense diamond planets. 
 Zoom in and explore!

Source:
http://www.halcyonmaps.com/exoplanets/

#space   #infographic   #exoplanets   #kepler   #nasa