Earlier this week, NASA’s Kepler space telescope ran out of fuel and retired from its goal of discovering a tremendous number of planets and systems out in space. Very sad, enjoy your retirement in the great void Mr. Kepler.
Launched in 2009, Kepler literally transformed our view of what lay out there in space, confirming suspicions that space is jam-packed with planets very similar to Earth. It’s a terrifying yet inspiring thought.
Kepler found an astonishing 2,327 exoplanets.
1,815 of those planets were on 726 multiplanet systems and YouTuber Ethan Kruse has used data taken from NASA’s Exoplanet Archive to make an illustrative video of those planets. It’s absolutely fascinating.
The video features accurate orbit patterns and the colours are based on the equilibrium planet temperature.
It serves to illustrate the incredible scale of what Kepler achieved. It was intended to last for three and a half years and ended up sticking around for almost 10. Vale big fella.