What is an exoplanet?
An exoplanet is a planet beyond our Solar System. Most orbit other stars; some travel through space without a stellar companion.
A world we usually cannot see
A planet is faint beside its star. Most discoveries therefore come from the effects a planet has on starlight, rather than a photograph of its surface. A confirmed record means the evidence meets the archive’s inclusion criteria; it does not mean every property is known.
A remarkably varied population
Some planets are smaller than Earth. Others are giants circling their stars in a handful of days. Discovery methods favour particular sizes and orbits, so the catalogue is a record of what we can detect rather than a complete census of the galaxy.
Reading the atlas
Start with the orbit, size and host star. Expand the scientific data for measurements. A missing value is a real limit to our knowledge, and illustrations are labelled separately from observations.