Data, sources & methodology
Primary catalogue
We synchronise the NASA Exoplanet Archive Planetary Systems Composite Parameters (PSCompPars) table through its TAP service. It provides one record per confirmed planet. Composite values may come from different publications and may include calculated values; they are not necessarily a self-consistent solution.
Units and classification
We convert parsecs to light-years using 3.26156 light-years per parsec. Radius bands: rocky-size below 1.25 Earth radii; super-Earth from 1.25 to below 2; Neptune-like from 2 to below 6; gas giant from 6 upwards. These are site browsing conventions, not measurements of composition. Objects without radius stay unclassified.
Updates and provenance
The local database powers page requests. A daily synchronisation checks for new or changed source records. Missing records are retained and flagged for review. The first import creates a baseline. The monthly archive-additions counter combines explicitly verified NASA bulletin additions before that baseline (three on 1 October 2026) with subsequent first-seen additions, deduplicated by planet. Bulletin backfills are month-specific; later months use detected additions. These are archive dates, not discovery or confirmation dates.
Using these numbers
Scientific use should refer to the archive’s original parameter references and errors. We do not publish inferred habitability labels or combine overlapping candidate catalogues. Source observations, modelled quantities and site classifications have different uncertainty.
Last successful catalogue sync: 2026-10-04T12:31:04.710Z. Planet change dates update only when their source values or editorial content change.
NASA TAP documentation ↗ · Column definitions ↗
Last reviewed: 4 October 2026