Exoplanet Explorer

About

How the numbers are made

Every planet comes from one table, refreshed weekly by a GitHub Action and served as a static file. Nothing runs on a server.

Where the catalogue leaves a gap, the explorer fills it and marks the value with ~:

Radius or mass from the other, with the Chen & Kipping (2017) mass–radius relation. Radial-velocity masses are minimum masses (M sin i) unless the inclination is known.
Semi-major axis from the period and the star's mass (Kepler's third law).
Insolation from the star's luminosity (or R²T⁴) over the orbit squared; equilibrium temperature from insolation with zero albedo.
Earth Similarity Index from radius and insolation, as in the PHL habitable-planet catalogue.
Habitable zone limits from Kopparapu et al. (2014): conservative between runaway and maximum greenhouse, optimistic between recent Venus and early Mars. Valid for stars of 2,600 to 7,200 K.
Tidal locking time after Gladman et al. (1996), with Q = 100, k₂ = 0.3 and a 12-hour starting day. Order of magnitude only.

The contact readouts use the story's calendar of the Contact Era, where today is the year 2219, to show when a signal heard now would have left and when a reply would arrive.