“Using the prolific planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have discovered 1,235 candidate planets orbiting other suns since the Kepler mission’s search for Earth-like worlds began in 2009. To find them, Kepler monitors a rich star field to identify planetary transits by the slight dimming of starlight caused by a planet crossing the face of its parent star. In this remarkable illustration, all of Kepler’s planet candidates are shown in transit with their parent stars ordered by size from top left to bottom right. Simulated stellar disks and the silhouettes of transiting planets are all shown at the same relative scale, with saturated star colors. Of course, some stars show more than one planet in transit, but you may have to examine the picture at high resolution to spot them all. For reference, the Sun is shown at the same scale, by itself below the top row on the right. In silhouette against the Sun’s disk, both Jupiter and Earth are in transit.” – NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
Whoever finds the most wins a hollow chocolate supernova. – amanda
Amazing! I love stuff like this! Thanks!
yes, that too, len. my first thought was that they looked like sparsely-speckled colored eggs, all lined up in a giant carton…
Just hit me. A planet passing in front of its sun looks like an embryo chick on an egg yolk.
Bit too damn esoteric for me – I still can’t work out wtf it is! (No hollow chocolate supernova for me!) 🙁
Thank you, Amanda. You are a star with no equal.