About the NASA Exoplanet Archive

The NASA Exoplanet Archive is an online astronomical exoplanet and stellar catalog and data service that collates and cross-correlates astronomical data and information on exoplanets and their host stars, and provides tools to work with these data. The archive is dedicated to collecting and serving important public data sets involved in the search for and characterization of extrasolar planets and their host stars. These data include stellar parameters (such as positions, magnitudes, and temperatures), exoplanet parameters (such as masses and orbital parameters) and discovery/characterization data (such as published radial velocity curves, photometric light curves, images, and spectra).

For an extensive overview of the archive's data, services and tools, see the published paper accepted by PASP, the technical journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

All data in the Exoplanet Archive are vetted by a team of astronomers (team roster) and are linked back to the original literature reference. Data are searchable either for an individual star or by stellar and planetary properties. The Exoplanet Archive offers direct access to frequently accessed data sets via an interactive table which allows sorting and filtering of the data. These data sets include:

• List of all known planets and hosts
• List of all Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs)
• List of all Kepler Threshold-Crossing Events (TCEs)

Additionally, a breakdown of the exoplanet counts by discovery method is available on the Planet Counts page.

The NASA Exoplanet Archive Users Group advises the archive on content and functionality.

Tools for Working With Exoplanet Data

The NASA Exoplanet Archive includes several tools for working with exoplanet and stellar host data. For tips on using the archive effectively, read the FAQ and Tip Archive.

• Interactive Tables for Planet Parameters: These interactive tables display data for various data sets, including Planetary Systems (PS), Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs), Threshold-Crossing Events (TCEs) and target stellar data. Users can filter, sort and download or export to other Exoplanet Archive services, such as the light curve visualization for the Kepler stars.


• Table Access Protocol (TAP) Service This services allows a user to programmatically access and retrieve data from the Planetary Systems (PS), Planetary Systems Composite Parameters (PSCompPars), Kepler Names, and K2 Names tables as an alternative to the interactive web interface. It is based on the recommended TAP standard developed by the Virtual Observatory community.


• Application Program Interface (API): This is the archive's original query-based service that allows a user access to the contents of various data tables via a URL or command-line-based query. Note the archive's data tables are slowly being transitioned to the newer TAP service, though some tables are still accessible through the original API service.


• Transit and Ephemeris Service for Kepler Objects of Interest and Planetary Systems: This service returns an ephemeris of the times of transit of the exoplanet across its host star. Optionally, for a given longitude and latitude or observatory, the service tabulates times of transit at that location and can calculate the time for secondary transits or other phase points in the orbit.


• Periodogram Service: This tool calculates the periodogram of time series data from the archive or a file uploaded by the user. The service supports three algorithms: Lomb-Scargle, Box-fitting Least Squares (BLS) and Plavchan. Phased light curves for the most significant periods are also available.


• EXOFAST: A fitting tool that accepts transit light curves and/or radial velocity data and various inputs to create models of planet systems. This web service is based on the original code by Jason Eastman.


• Predicted Observables for Exoplanets (POE): An observational planning tool that provides estimates of the Habitable Zone (HZ) parameters and predicted planet signatures (e.g., RV and astrometric wobbles, transit depths, etc.) for stars known to host exoplanets or KOIs, Mission Stars, or hypothetical stars. It can be applied to individual stars or to catalogs of stars from the archive.


• Inventory Service/Search for Archive Holdings: A search tool that provides a list of all data in the Exoplanet Archive that corresponds to a user-specified object or location.


• Plotting and Histogram Tool: Create scatter plots and histograms from Planetary Systems Table data.


• Pre-generated Exoplanet Plots: These are presentation-ready plots that are generated daily with the most current information available in the Exoplanet Archive.

Transit Survey Data in the Exoplanet Archive

The Exoplanet Archive serves photometric time-series data from surveys that aim to discover transiting exoplanets, such as the Kepler Mission and CoRoT. The database provides access to over 107 million light curves from space and ground-based exoplanet transit survey programs, including:

• List of Planet Candidates from TESS
• List of Planet Candidates from K2
• Kepler public survey data
• K2 public survey data
• UKIRT microlensing survey data
• SuperWASP light curves
• CoRoT Exoplanet survey data
• CoRoT Asteroseismology data
• HATNet Survey data
• XO Survey data
• TrES Survey data
• KELT Praesepe survey data
• KELT time series (Fields N02, N04, N06, N08, N10, N12, S05, S12–14, S17–26, S29–30, S32, S34–38)

Acknowledging the NASA Exoplanet Archive in Publications

Please see the Acknowledging the NASA Exoplanet Archive page for specific wording to include in your published materials.

Holdings

The Exoplanet Archive offers search and filtering capabilities for exoplanets, Kepler candidates and time series data sets. A complete listing of the data in the Exoplanet Archive can be found here.

Related Resources

Last updated: 27 April 2021