| The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia | |
|---|---|
| URL | http://exoplanet.eu/ |
| Type of site | Astronomy |
| Registration | none |
| Owner | Paris Observatory |
| Created by | Jean Schneider |
| Launched | February 1995 |
| Current status | Active |
The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia[1] is an astronomy website, founded in Paris, France by Jean Schneider in February 1995, which maintains a database of all the currently known and candidate extrasolar planets, with individual "note" pages for each planet and a full list interactive catalog spreadsheet. The main catalogue comprises databases of all of the currently confirmed extrasolar planets as well as a database of unconfirmed planet detections. The databases are frequently updated with new data from peer-reviewed publications and conferences.
In their respective pages, the Planets are listed along with their basic properties such as the year of planet’s discovery, mass, radius, orbital period, semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, longitude of periastron, time of periastron, maximum time variation, and time of transit, including all error range values.
The individual planet data pages also contain the data on the parent star such as Name, Distance (pc), Spectral Type, Effective Temperature, Apparent Magnitude V, Mass, Radius , Age, Right Asc. Coord., Decl. Coord.
Even when they are known, not all of these figures are listed in the interactive spreadsheet catalog. And many missing planet figures that would simply require the application of Kepler's third law of motion are left blank. Most notably absent on all pages is the star's luminosity.
The interactive catalog that lists all of the data together in spreadsheet format does not contain any error value ranges for any type of data. Anyone who strictly goes by the interactive catalog spreadsheet version might miss the wide range of error on many of the planet's individual data page.
For example, planet GQ Lup b is listed as a 21.5 Jupiter mass object when it is in fact anywhere from (±20.5) a 1.0 Jupiter mass object to a 42 Jupiter mass object.
References
- ^ e.g. M. Pätzold, H. Rauer, Astrophys. J. Lett., 568, L117 (2002); S. Ida, D. N. C. Lin, Astrophys. J., 604, 388 (2004); S. N. Raymond, A. M. Mandell, S. Sigurdsson, Science 313, 1413 (2006); J. C. Armstrong, S. L. Larson, Bull. Am. Astron. Soc., 38, 105 (2007); D. J. Stevenson, Nature 451, 261 (2008).
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