The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia is an astronomy website, founded in Paris, France at the Meudon Observatory by Jean Schneider in February 1995, which maintains a database of all the currently known and candidate extrasolar planets, with individual pages for each planet and a full list interactive catalog spreadsheet. The main catalogue comprises databases of all of the currently confirmed extrasolar planets as well as a database of unconfirmed planet detections. The databases are frequently updated with new data from peer-reviewed publications and conferences.
Kepler-7b is one of the first five exoplanets to be confirmed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, and was confirmed in the first 33.5 days of Kepler's science operations. It orbits a star slightly hotter and significantly larger than the Sun that is expected to soon reach the end of the main sequence. Kepler-7b is a hot Jupiter that is about half the mass of Jupiter, but is nearly 1.5 times its size; at the time of its discovery, Kepler-7b was the second most diffuse planet known, surpassed only by WASP-17b. It orbits its host star every five days at a distance of approximately 0,06 AU. Kepler-7b was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 4, 2010. It is the first extrasolar planet to have a crude map of cloud coverage.
Kepler-8 is a star located in the constellation Lyra in the field of view of the Kepler Mission, a NASA-led operation tasked with discovering terrestrial planets. The star, which is slightly hotter, larger, and more massive than the Sun, has one gas giant in its orbit, Kepler-8b. This gas giant is larger than Jupiter, but is less massive, and thus more diffuse. The planet's discovery was announced to the public on January 4, 2010 along with four other planets. As the fifth confirmed planetary system verified by Kepler, it helped demonstrate the capabilities of the Kepler spacecraft.
An exoplanet is a planet located outside the Solar System. The first evidence of an exoplanet was noted as early as 1917, but was not recognized as such until 2016; no planet discovery has yet come from that evidence. What turned out to be the first detection of an exoplanet was published among a list of possible candidates in 1988, though not confirmed until 2003. The first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star was made in 1995, when a giant planet was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Pegasi. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method and the radial-velocity method. As of 1 October 2023, there are 5,506 confirmed exoplanets in 4,065 planetary systems, with 878 systems having more than one planet. This is a list of the most notable discoveries.
Kepler-10, formerly known as KOI-72, is a Sun-like star in the constellation of Draco that lies 607 light-years from Earth. Kepler-10 was targeted by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, as it was seen as the first star identified by the Kepler mission that could be a possible host to a small, transiting exoplanet. The star is slightly less massive, slightly larger, and slightly cooler than the Sun; at an estimated 11.9 billion years in age, Kepler-10 is almost 2.6 times the age of the Sun.
Kepler-16b is an exoplanet. It is a Saturn-mass planet consisting of half gas and half rock and ice, and it orbits a binary star, Kepler-16, with a period of 229 days. "[It] is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet – a planet orbiting not one, but two stars," said Josh Carter of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, one of the discovery team.
Kepler-20 is a star about 934 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra with a system of at least five, and possibly six, known planets. The apparent magnitude of this star is 12.51, so it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. Viewing it requires a telescope with an aperture of 15 cm (6 in) or more. It is slightly smaller than the Sun, with 94% of the Sun's radius and about 91% of the Sun's mass. The effective temperature of the photosphere is slightly cooler than that of the Sun at 5466 K, giving it the characteristic yellow hue of a stellar class G8 star. The abundance of elements other than hydrogen or helium, what astronomers term the metallicity, is approximately the same as in the Sun. It may be older than the Sun, although the margin of error here is relatively large.
Kepler-70, also known as KIC 5807616 and formerly as KOI-55, is a star in the constellation Cygnus with an apparent visual magnitude of 14.87, and is 4200 light-years away. This is too faint to be seen with the naked eye; viewing it requires a telescope with an aperture of 40 cm (20 in) or more. A subdwarf B star, Kepler-70 passed through the red giant stage some 18.4 million years ago. In its present-day state, it is fusing helium in its core. Once it runs out of helium it will contract to form a white dwarf. It has a relatively small radius of about 0.2 times the Sun's radius; white dwarfs are generally much smaller. The star may be host to a planetary system with two planets, although later research indicates that this is not in fact the case. If they are confirmed to exist, then the innermost planet has the highest temperature of any known planet.
Kepler-87c is a planet orbiting Kepler-87, a star slightly more massive than the Sun and nearing the end of its main-sequence period.
Kepler-56 is a red giant in constellation Cygnus roughly 3,060 light-years (940 pc) away with slightly more mass than the Sun.
Kepler-444 is a triple star system, estimated to be 11.2 billion years old, approximately 119 light-years (36 pc) away from Earth in the constellation Lyra. On 27 January 2015, the Kepler spacecraft is reported to have confirmed the detection of five sub-Earth-sized rocky exoplanets orbiting the main star. The star is a K-type main sequence star. All of the planets are far too close to their star to harbour life forms.
The exoplanet naming convention is an extension of the system used for naming multiple-star systems as adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). For exoplanets orbiting a single star, the name is normally formed by taking the name of its parent star and adding a lowercase letter. A provisional IAU-sanctioned standard exists to accommodate the naming of planets that orbit two stars, which are known as circumbinary planets. A limited number of exoplanets have IAU-sanctioned proper names. Other naming systems exist.
K2-66b is a confirmed mega-Earth orbiting the subgiant K2-66, about 520 parsecs (1,700 ly) from Earth in the direction of Aquarius. It is an extremely hot and dense planet heavier than Neptune, but with only about half its radius.
Kepler-411 is a binary star system. Its primary star Kepler-411 is a K-type main-sequence star, orbited by the red dwarf star Kepler-411B on a wide orbit, discovered in 2012.
Kepler-289 (PH3) is a star slightly more massive than the Sun, with an unknown spectral type, 2300 light-years away from Earth. In 2014, three planets were discovered orbiting it.
