Kepler Orrery

All the multiple-planet systems discovered by Kepler as of 2/2/2011; orbits go through the entire mission (3.5 years). Hot colors to Cool colors (Red to yellow to green to cyan to blue to gray) are Big planets to Smaller planets, relative to the other planets in the system.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[ThePostFuturist]

Why did you omit the ellipticity - is it really that negligible?

[dfabrycky]

The main reason is that we cannot measure eccentricities of the vast majority of these systems. Therefore anything I use would be guesswork. Secondly, in this kind of display, eccentricities below 0.1 wouldn't really look different, so choosing zero gives about the correct flavor.

[willrelio2609]

the thing below #880 spins really fast!!!

[dfabrycky]

That would be KOI-961. It's an eye-sore, eh?  Now all has been understood by these guys -- search arxiv:1201.2189 -- I'm a coauthor. The Kepler Orrery II also "fails" to represent this, because the system looks like a wiggling dot!

[willrelio2609]

NOTICE: PLANET #433'S PARENT STAR IS SPINNING VERY FAST!!!!

[dfabrycky]

Actually, none of the stars are represented. What you see is an inner planet with a short orbital period.

[BorderAmigos]

Some people investigate, learn and are capable of understanding the universe. The rest have religions.

[apm78229]

All These World Are Yours

[Chris Gregory]

I can't decide which song would be better for background music, Holst's "Jupiter" or "Yakety Sax."

[phuturephunk]

Planets that are orbiting stars in a stable manner are basically the right size mass (weight) travelling at the right speed and trajectory (direction) to put them there.

Same thing with comets way way out. Although the sun'/s gravity at that distance is weak, it's still there and that means that the comets are bound by gravity to the sun.

[bicnarok]

just wondering why planets don´t fall into the suns faster, and why some comets which go as far out as the oort cloud, don´t stay there.

[paideguinha]

imagine if earth was that planet #94. lol