2011-2012 Exoplanet Archive News

For current news, see the Exoplanet Archive News page. For other news archives by year, see the 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013 archives.

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December 12, 2012: Kepler pipeline information now available

As part of the Kepler Extended Mission, the Kepler project is making information from the pipeline available to the entire community and changing the way that candidate lists are distributed. This new philosophy is described here. The items available in the Exoplanet Archive are:

  • Threshold Crossing Events (TCE) interactive table
  • Data Validation (DV) Reports: available from the interactive tables popup bubbles and Kepler overview pages. See the archive's Kepler Mission page for more details.
  • The planetary candidates from Batalha et al (2012) (Q1-Q6) are now in the Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) interactive table. Future releases will contain separate tables for KOIs identified with different sets of quarters.

For more information on all Kepler data and tools available in the archive, see the archive's Kepler Mission page. Other new features of this release include expanded overview pages for Kepler candidates and host stars, available either through the Search for a Planet or Stellar System link or from the popup bubbles in the interactive tables.

CoRoT light curve data sets for run codes LRc04, LRc05, LRa03, and SRa03, for both the Astero-Seismology and Exoplanet Survey channels are now available in the archive. This release includes 30 new Astero-Seismology light curves, and 20817 new Exoplanet Survey light curves. To access, click the CoROT Astero-Seismology and Exoplanet links on the left side of our home page.

November 29, 2012: 4 new planets have been added: WASP-77A b, kappa And b, GJ 676A d and GJ 676A e.

November 15, 2012: 10 new planets have been added: HD 40307 e, HD 40307 f, HD 40307 g, HD 66141 b, HD 208527 b, HD 220074 b, WASP-52b, WASP-58b, WASP-59b, WASP-60b.

November 8, 2012: The archive added three new planets: HD 37605 c, HD 4732 b, HD 4732 c.

Also, the archive now has a YouTube channel for video tutorials. Check out the video on how to use the Viewable Service to find transiting exoplanets. Links to the YouTube channel, our Facebook page, the exoplanet-announce mailing list and more can be found on our new Stay Connected page.

November 5, 2012: Kepler light curve data sets for quarter 13 are now available in the archive. To access, click the Kepler Light Curves link on the left side of our home page.

October 29, 2012: Kepler light curve data sets for quarters 10, 11 and 12 are now available in the archive. To access, click the Kepler Light Curves link on the left side of our home page. Data for quarter 13 will be made available soon.

October 18, 2012: The archive has added three confirmed planets: Alpha Centauri B b, Kepler-38 b and WTS-1 b. Alpha Cen B b is the smallest-mass terrestrial planet discovered with the radial velocity technique to date, at ~1.13 times the mass of Earth. It is also an exoplanet discovered in the closest stellar system to our Sun. More information is available in the press release at the European Southern Observatory site.

October 10, 2012: The archive now offers a new overview page for every confirmed planet that includes reorganized and expanded information. Also, links to additional science content have been added to confirmed Kepler planets listed in the Confirmed Planets table.

To access the data, click the Browse Confirmed Planets link on the left side of our home page, then type Kepler in the Host Name field to filter the table contents down to just Kepler sources.

In the filtered table, double-click the icon next to any one of the Kepler host names (some browsers may only require a single click). The new links lead to a new Kepler Pipeline Overview page for each object, Target Pixel Files provided by MAST to perform your own custom photometry, and a link to send the data directly to the archive's Time Series and Periodogram tools.

Also, some improvements to our database have resulted in changes to the column names that are used in the Confirmed Planets table. View the full, updated list on the Exoplanet Table Columns document.

September 13, 2012: A newly discovered planet, epsilon CrB b, has been added to the archive. This planet was detected using the radial velocity method.

September 6, 2012:

  • The archive has been updated with the addition of three new planets. A new planet has been added to the HD 142 system (HD 142c). A new Kepler system (Kepler-47) has also been added that consists of two planets in circumbinary orbits (Kepler-47b and Kepler-47c).

  • Also, the archive now has a Facebook page.
August 23, 2012:
  • The archive added 29 new planets, including 27 Kepler candidates that have been confirmed using the Transit Timing Variation technique, as well as two new radial velocity planets. View them by clicking the Browse Confirmed Planets link on the left side of our home page.

  • The latest version of the Kepler false positive table has been incorporated into the Kepler candidates table. Note that the object KOI 1902.01 is now categorized as a false positive, and several objects have been removed from the false positive list. See the FAQ for details.

August 13, 2012: Three new planets have been added to the archive: KOI-13b, Kepler-46b, and Kepler-46c.

August 2, 2012: The archive has added 19 new planets, including six detected through the radial velocity method and 15 from planet transit searches (four from the Hungarian Automated Telescope—HAT-P—and nine from the Wide Angle Search for Planets—WASP). To view the planet parameters, click the Search for a Planetary System or Browse Confirmed Planets links on the left side of our home page.

July 28, 2012: Kepler light curve data sets for quarters 7, 8 and 9 are now available in the archive. To access, click the Kepler Light Curves link on the left side of our home page.

July 18, 2012: The Spitzer Space Telescope has been added to the Viewable Transit Service and the input window for calculations has been expanded to allow searching all sites over a one-year time period. This allows you to view all transits that will happen in a given Spitzer proposal cycle. To access the service, click the Viewable Transit Service link on the left side of our home page.

July 12, 2012: The archive has added five new planets: BD+20 274 b, HD 219415 b, HD 77338 b, Pr0201 b, and Pr0211 b. The last two are the first exoplanets to be discovered in an open cluster.

July 3, 2012: Reprocessed Kepler light curves from quarters 5-8 are now available in the archive. The reprocessing makes use of an updated version of the SOC pipeline. You can access the FITS files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link on the left side of our home page. Note, the full data sets for quarters 7-9 will be released at the end of July, and the data included in this release for quarters 7 and 8 include only data that are currently public.

June 28, 2012: The archive has added eight new planets, including include two new planets from the SuperWASP project: WASP-78b and WASP-79b. Also included are the first detected planets from the HAT-South and KELT surveys: HATS-1b, KELT-1b, and KELT-2Ab. The other planets are Kepler-36b, Kepler-36c, and MOA 2010-BLG-477Lb.

May 30, 2012: The Exoplanet Archive has released several new features and data. Here is a summary:

  • A new table with Combined data: Data for both confirmed planets and Kepler candidates are now in a single table interface.

  • Plotting of table columns: You can now plot columns from the interactive tables (Confirmed Planets, Kepler Candidates and Combined).

  • More options on table downloads: Downloading planet table data now includes more output formats and control over which data (with or without table filtering and selected columns) are included.

  • Kepler light curve plotting: Multi-quarter light curve plotting for Kepler now includes separate column selection for each quarters and additional plot controls.

  • Viewable transits: A new service that finds viewable transits for a given 24-hour period at a location specified by the user. To access, click the Viewable Transits Service link on the left side of the home page.

  • Sortable tables in display of next transits of confirmed planets and Kepler candidates.

  • Additional massive planets: The Confirmed Planets table is now complete with published planets up to 30 M(Jupiter).

  • Kepler candidate overview page: This is a single page containing all information in the archive for each Kepler candidate. To access, click the icon next to any KepID in the Kepler Candidates table.(example:

May 8, 2012: Reprocessed Kepler light curves from quarters 0-4 are now available in the archive. Reprocessed Kepler light curves from quarters 5-8 will be released at a later date. The reprocessing makes use of an updated version of the SOC pipeline. You can access the FITS files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link on the left side of our home page.

April 27, 2012: The archive now provides pre-generated plots for current exoplanet and Kepler candidate data contained in the archive. These plots can be used as ready-made presentation material to describe the current state of the exoplanets in terms of their orbital and physical characteristics. To access, click the Pre-generated plots link in the Current Exoplanet Archive Holdings box on the home page.

April 5, 2012: The Community Follow-up Observing Program (CFOP) Web site to support observations of Kepler candidates is now available at https://cfop.ipac.caltech.edu. This Web-based tool aims to optimize resources and facilitate collaboration in follow-up studies of planet candidates in the Kepler field and is open to anyone interested in observations of Kepler objects.

April 4, 2012: The archive has updated the Kepler Objects of Interest (KOI) and false positive status flags from Batalha et al. 2012 for searching the Kepler light curves. The archive has also added a small number of Kepler light curves from quarters 0 through 6 that were not included in previous releases, including 12 quarter time-series for KOIs. You can access the data files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link on the left of our home page.

March 26, 2012: Two new features have been added to the Exoplanet Archive Web site. A file upload service accepts a list of planet host names to view the planetary parameters in the Interactive Exoplanet Viewer; access it by clicking the Upload File to Search Tables link on the left side of the home page. The Planet Counts page has a breakdown of exoplanets by discovery method and Kepler mission counts; view it by clicking the Planet Counts link in the Current Exoplanet Archive Holdings box on the home page.

March 1, 2012: The archive has added 20,013 Kepler light curves from quarters 7 and 8. You can access the data files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link in the upper-left corner of our home page. This release includes time-series for known red giants. For more information see http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler/red_giant_release.html.

February 28, 2012: An updated Kepler Candidate list has been incorporated into the archive. The updated table includes a total of 2,321 planet candidates identified by the Kepler Mission. A detailed description of the new list can be found at Batalha et al. 2012 (ApJS, submitted).

February 15, 2012: Thirteen new exoplanets have been added, including nine from Kepler: Kepler-23b Kepler-23c, Kepler-24b, Kepler-24c, Kepler-33b, Kepler-33c, Kepler-33d, Kepler-33e, Kepler-33f. Four RV planets have also been added: GJ 667C c, HD 79498 b, HD 220773 b and HD 197037 b .

January 12, 2012: Six new planets have been added. This includes four new planets from the HATNet project (HAT-P-34b, HAT-P-35b, HAT-P-36b, HAT-P-37b) and two new circumbinary binary planets from the Kepler project (Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b). Also, check out our new page of Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers). If you have a question that is not on the page, consider sending it to our Help Desk.

January 9, 2012: Kepler light curves from quarters 4, 5 and 6 are now available in the archive. You can access the FITS files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link in the upper-left corner of our home page.

January 5, 2012: Five Kepler planets have been added: Kepler-20b, Kepler-20c, Kepler-20d, Kepler-20e, Kepler-20f. Also, the Exoplanet Archive has been updated to include additional file download options and better support for Internet Explorer.

December 15, 2011: Two planets have been added: CoRoT-19b and CoRoT-23b.

December 5, 2011: Kepler-22b has been added to the archive. Kepler-22b is a near-Earth-sized planet recently confirmed to orbit in the habitable zone of a star similar to our Sun. More details at NASA's Kepler news page.

December 5, 2011: The NASA Exoplanet Archive has launched!

The new archive is funded by NASA through the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) to serve the user community working with exoplanet data, primarily transit data sets from Kepler and CoRoT, by providing long-term data curation and analysis tools. Data content includes exoplanet and stellar host properties, Kepler candidate properties, and some contributed exoplanet data from space- and ground-based projects.

New services and enhancements include:

  • Interactive tables for exoplanets and hosts and Kepler Planetary Candidates.

  • Multi-quarter light curve viewer for Kepler data, including periodogram, calculations, normalization and phased light curves.

  • Kepler candidate table includes centroid information from the Kepler project pipeline.