Talk:List of potentially habitable exoplanets/Archive 1

Venus - not habitable ? Where does this conclusion come from ?
Last I checked we did not have enough data to conclude that Venus is non-habitable. There are possible habitats (atmosphere) that could be as habitable for life as we know it as some extreme habitats on Earth. Again, it looks like another Star Wars inspired article that assumes an anthropocentric view of habitable.--EvenGreenerFish (talk) 02:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's pretty speculative given that we have a sample size of one. Presumably the color codes imply some sort of likelihood, although they are unexplained. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Since there is no known form of life that could survive Venus' surface temperature it is good science to say it is non-habitable. At this time anything else would be speculation and not science. 66.27.66.8 (talk) 01:16, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In planetary science, unqualified "habitability" nearly always refers to human habitability, not to the potential for life in general. If anything, Star Wars is quite a bit less anthropocentric. Kaleja (talk) 21:40, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If you wanted to equate Venus to imagery from the Star Wars films, you should look to Bespin. It's an example of a planetary body with a thick gaseous atmosphere and an inhabitable surface. Haerdt (talk) 04:15, 06 November 2014 (UTC)

Discrepancy for Gliese 667 C's ESI
Quoted as 8.2 here which is different figure to the 8.5 quoted in the citation. --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 05:20, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problems?
I think that this page have copyright problems where Habitable Zone Distance (HZD) and other methodology from. --Honeplus (talk) 16:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Based on the source cited prior to the copyright flag, this page was not in violation. The source cited was a project supported by, among other things, an NSF grant.  The NSF support places the findings/methodology of the project cleanly in the public domain.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.11.192.78 (talk) 14:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Editing previous statement to correct a human-read error: The license given by the source page is NOT Wikipedia-compatible (CC-By-NC-SA, in this case - given at bottom of page). To continue using the quarantined text, additional permissions will need to be sought according to the instructions found at. I would suggest in the meantime simply using a note of reference in the article and visible link to the original source, at least until either appropriate permission or a non-infringing variant of the data can be generated.

"combined"?
The "combined" statistic is not found in the cited reference, nor is it explained here. Can anyone shed light on this? --Lasunncty (talk) 06:41, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's explained in the mouseover on the table. (ESI + SPH + 1-HZD + 1-HZC + 1-HZA / 5), which is a mean average. ShellfaceTheStrange (talk) 00:48, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This seems like an absurd OR calculation. The ESI is already supposed to somewhat give a "summary" of the other data, while this "combined" value makes several planets score higher than Earth. I'd request removing this column...  --Roentgenium111 (talk) 14:56, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it could be ORish, but I don't think that is a problem. As for some planets being better placed than earth I don't see any problems with that. ESI is the only one which by definition puts Earth on top; for the other ones, as far as we know there might even be life there, albeit not intelligent. Technically speaking they might be better suited for life than earth is at the current stage of solar evolution. Nergaal (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Of course OR is a problem (in fact, forbidden) on Wikipedia, and giving averages of unrelated values given in "different units" is meaningless (like "averaging" diameter and orbital period of a planet would be), and thus not covered by WP:CALC. You're right that there may be exoplanets even better suited to life than Earth, but I don't see this as being the case for any of the listed (or any other discovered) exoplanets, nor does any source that I know of. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:50, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

other categories
What other scientific criteria on habitability is there? The moon may play a big part in advanced life on Earth. Tides are believed to have provided small pools of water for life to get started. The Earth's large moon helps stabilize the axis from wobbling too much. This reduces big climate changes that stunt evolutionary progress beyond simple one celled organizations. The gravity of a large outer planet like Jupiter attracts objects that might impact a planet's surface. 22yearswothanks (talk) 16:33, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Gliese 163 c
The HEC website does list this object as #5 on its list of confirmed PHEs, with an ESI of 0.73. However, when I go to the database file that lists all the other parameters (SPH, HZD, HZC, and HZA), it is not so high on the list. There it has a ESI of only 0.39. This file was updated 9/22/12, but the site says it was updated 9/17/12. Since I'm not sure which data is correct, I'm leaving it out of the table for now. --Lasunncty (talk) 09:34, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
 * FWIW - Yes, I *entirely* agree - this may need more time to get sorted out - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 12:20, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Psychroplanet? Thermoplanet?
Both those terms redirect here, and both those terms are used here, but there is no definition here. The same is true of mesoplanet. Can someone please provide definitions of the terms used. Based on the root "psychro", I expected it to mean "cold", but everything in the table listed here is "warm", even the "psychroplanets". What the heck? 74.82.132.35 (talk) 22:10, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Messy page
The big copyright notice looks terrible. If such a notice is to be used then any such investigation should be swift and either the content removed or the notice removed within a few days. It appears to have been there for over 2 months which is far too long for such an investigation. Just give the benefit of the doubt unless the copyright holder has complained and unless Wikipedia feels they would pursue a law suit or succeed in one. Stop messing about.--ЗAНИA talk talk] 16:48, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/methods. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. &mdash;Darkwind (talk) 08:40, 30 December 2012 (UTC)


 * As a copyright clerk, I determined the entire Methodology section had to be removed, but I don't have the expertise to rewrite it. I'm going to tag the article with expert for WikiProject Astronomical Objects to see if someone can take a look at writing it up. &mdash;Darkwind (talk) 08:42, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I guess the List of habitable planet candidates is about the same exoplanets as this one. --4th-otaku (talk) 12:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I support a merge, these two articles are redundant. Hekerui (talk) 15:43, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support. Keep this list, and merge the other one with this one; there is no need for two lists about the exact same subject. Yiosie 2356 08:26, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support, and make sure no information is lost (e.g. the "see also" entries) --Waldir talk 16:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I support a merge as well. These articles are about the same thing, and this one is definitely better. Carbon6 talk 00:59, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Merged to List of potential habitable exoplanets. Need to update this list. NickSt (talk) 19:11, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Second Merger proposal
There's another list at List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates that should also be merged here. --thechuck (talk) 16:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.147.51 (talk)
 * Sounds sensible, but that list makes no attempt to filter by habitability. Perhaps they should simply be linked to each other in the corresponding "See also" sections. --Waldir talk 20:12, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Mismatched entries with stated source
The HEC entries seem to differ from those on this article's list. I found the following unmatched entries:

Only on HEC:
 * 1) KOI-3010.01
 * 2) KOI-2762.01
 * 3) KOI-1298.02
 * 4) KOI-2834.01
 * 5) KOI-2931.01
 * 6) KOI-518.03
 * 7) KOI-3036.01
 * 8) KOI-2882.01
 * 9) KOI-581.02

Only on Wikipedia:
 * 1) KOI-1876.01
 * 2) KOI-1938.01
 * 3) KOI-2124.01
 * 4) KOI-2290.01
 * 5) KOI-2410.01
 * 6) KOI-2553.01
 * 7) KOI-2650.01
 * 8) KOI-438.02

What gives? --Waldir talk 20:27, 6 February 2013 (UTC) I personally think deleting pages was a terrible idea, should be more info on wikipedia about this and not less Armchairphysicist (talk) 12:54, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I have updated all of the entries, should be fine now. Yiosie  2356 23:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Just looking at the last one KOI-438.02 it is now confirmed to be Kepler-155c and indeed it meets the criteria for being habitable (<2.5Re, >173 K, <373 K) I don't know why it is not included. See for yourself here. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 17:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Should be updated by a bot
We can use User:DrTrigonBot/Subster to automatically extract latest data from the catalog *.csv.zip files. Python programmer is needed (see  postproc). --4th-otaku (talk) 15:51, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I have taken it upon myself to completely update the list manually from the catalog *.csv.zip files. It has taken the better part of two hours, but there you go! Updated data of non-KOI objects was not included, so if anyone knows where to find information regarding these, it would be much appreciated. Yiosie  2356 23:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback: I think it would be better i...
CDH31211811 posted this comment on 18 May 2013 (view all feedback).

"I think it would be better if there is a picture of the planet next to the list."

Should we add some more images, as in the List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates? --4th-otaku (talk) 01:44, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
 * There are no pictures of extrasolar planets, just art. --JorisvS (talk) 10:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be better if this article recieved a higher importance rating and attention by an expert!Armchairphysicist (talk) 12:58, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

ESI for Gliese 667 Cc
The source given says 0.82. Please explain where 0.79 comes from ... --EvenGreenerFish (talk) 05:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Our source revises the stats for exoplanets every now and then. That's one of the reasons why I think we should have that section under a perpetual in need of updating tag.--Omega13a (talk) 19:34, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Colors?
Can somebody explain what do the colors really mean? Nergaal (talk) 04:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

No informations about Kepler-69c
No informations about Kepler-69c

Incorrect and inconsistent planet classifications
The article states Earth as a so called "mesoplanet". According to the definition of the term "mesoplanet" it's an object smaller than Mercury but larger than Ceres. The term "psycroplanet" is not a scientific term. It however refers to a cold planet but is here used in combination with "warm subterranean", which is very inconsistent. Mercury's classification on the list is "non-habitable" which is not only inconsistent to the rest of the list, but its very presence on the list could and should be questions as it's supposed to be a list over potentially habitable exoplanets. Also is Mercury not an exoplanet and neither is Venus, Earth or Mars. There have only been found eight possibly habitable exoplanets of which one is HD 85512b but that is not featured on the list.

There's so much incorrect and inconsistent information in this article that it's surprising that it hasn't been flagged or edited yet.Cesium137 (talk) 17:28, 6 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The terms mesoplanet, psychroplanet etc. are defined in the article, based on the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog on which this list is based (see the article's references); your definition of mesoplanet as "an object smaller than Mercury but larger than Ceres" is just a term invented by Asimov, not at all accepted scientifically AFAIK. Mercury, Venus etc. are obviously only given for comparison purposes; and what do you think is inconsistent about Mercury being "non-habitable"? It's clearly outside the habitable zone, while e.g. Venus is on the border according to some definitions of habitable zone. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

The expressions "mesoplanet" and "psycroplanet" are not scientific terms to begin with, but that's relatively unimportant. Concerning that the article is based on the HEC, who lists only 20 potential habitable exoplanets (plus 49 unverified Kepler candidates), it should be questioned why the list of this article also contains unverified planets (shouldn't it be more proper to wait till they're verified?) I admit to have missed that the non-exo planets are stated as examples of comparison but concerning the inconsistence of Mercury being "non-habitable" is that then also Mars should be listed as "non-habitable" as its clearly outside the habitable zone. Concerning whether Venus is on the verge of, or outside the habitable zone is not really relevant as a significant part of the definition of habitable zone is the possibility for liquid water to exist on the surface, which is not the case with Venus or Mars (or Mercury, obviously). There are theories that the dense atmosphere of Venus in fact comes from vaporized ocean and if that would be true, that would mean that Venus was once within the habitable zone, but at the same time the oceans would not have vaporized if the planet remained within the habitable zone. Cesium137 (talk) 22:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)


 * AFAICS, all data of the table and definitions are taken from the HEC, see . Wikipedia only reports what they (scientists...) write.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

The information may be taken from the HEC but that does unfortunately not prevent this article from being inconsistent, poorly structured and contain errors. I definitely don't mean to be rude, I merely want to suggest that the page would become better it it was completed with more details and information and "cleaned up" from inconsistent information (as mentioned above. Cesium137 (talk) 12:38, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I understand your point, but it is not Wikipedia's job to correct purported errors in the sources, unless they are pointed out by other reliable sources. And the HEC does not actually claim that all psychro- or thermoplanets (like Mars and Venus) are habitable. The definition of psychro- and thermoplanets only means that they are in a (loosely defined) habitable zone, which Mars and Venus are (see Habitable_zone). --Roentgenium111 (talk) 19:32, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Gliese 667 Cf
On the table it says "confirmed", wich I take it means it's confirmed that it exist. At the planet page, however, it says it has been confirmed that it doesn't exist. And the same goes for Gliese 667 Ce. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.59.3.149 (talk) 14:09, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for noting this. The planet pages say "unconfirmed" currently (with existence seriously inn doubt). I've fixed the article accordingly, making them "dubious". --Roentgenium111 (talk) 19:04, 17 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The Planetary Habitability Laboratory lists it as unconfirmed since one of the papers they cited that said it doesn't exist said it couldn't rule out its existence completely from what I understand.--Omega13a (talk) 19:41, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Seriously incorrect data in list of planets
The data in the list of planets looks incorrect, especially for Kepler-186f. According to http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog/data, its ESI is 0.64 and is a psychroplanet yet in the list here, it has an ESI of 0.96 and is a mesoplanet...--Omega13a (talk) 05:35, 20 April 2014 (UTC)


 * An IP editor seems to have randomly switched planet names in order to boost 186f: I reverted. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 17:01, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

"Potential" or "Potentially"
This is in response to the recent move from "List of potential habitable exoplanets" to "List of potentially habitable exoplanets". I wondered about this myself, but it could be rationalized either way. Is the word in question modifying habitable or exoplanets? I.e., are we talking about potential exoplanets that are habitable, or exoplanets that are potentially habitable? Maybe this is splitting hairs, but I thought it could use some discussion. --Lasunncty (talk) 10:36, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Most exoplanets are kinda confirmed. So the only potential part is the habitable one. Nergaal (talk) 10:48, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * If it's only a potential exoplanet that's certainly habitable, then how do we know there's enough water if we don't know there's a planet? Google Scholar prefers "potentially", 91 hits to 9. Art LaPella (talk) 14:15, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually most exoplanets aren't confirmed. Of the 6055 you can get data for at Planetary Habitability Laboratory, only 1826 are confirmed. The rest are simply candidates. (these numbers are of Sep. 27, 2014 12:30 Pacific Time). --Omega13a (talk) 19:28, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

About those HZAs
So I've just updated the table, and the new data leaves many of the previously listed Kepler candidates (and also two confirmed planets) with HZAs of more than 1. The mouseover states "Values above +1 represent bodies likely with thick hydrogen atmospheres (e.g gas giants)", which makes these of… questionable value for this list. What do you think of having an upper limit for HZAs for planets included in this table? Is 1 a meaningful limit? ShellfaceTheStrange (talk) 22:21, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, the list on the Planetary Habitability Laboratory has planets that have a HZA greater than 2 however, those are exoplanets in which only the radius is known. Given that for all the potentially habitable planets we know either the radius or the mass but not both, I think they aren't using the HZA and HZC as an important factor for determining habitability as that they are derived from physical properties we aren't very certain of. Also, I started to make an updated list you can see here.Omega13a (talk) 22:48, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Problematic table
There are several problems with the table, even if you discount the fact that it's outdated.

Firstly: several of the terms are more jargon than actual astronomy. For instance: psychroplanet is a term that is not used by NASA or any other reputable sources (see NASA's glossary). If you Google it, the only major hits are Wikipedia and University of Puerto Rico. Very few serious astronomers (if any) use the terms that the Planetary Habitability Laboratory use. This makes this table border on WP:Original research.

Secondly: pClass and hClass are very strangely defined. The definitions are also not from a standard glossary. It's even stated in the text that the source is the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, but no other organisations use those definitions.

Thirdly: Several of the planets are listed as both "warm superterran" and "psychroplanet". This means that they are both warm and cold at the same time.

Fourthly: The status column mixes "Unconfirmed" and "dubious", for the same thing.

Fifthly: The discovery column is very loosely defined. For instance, was Earth discovered? When was Mars discovered? Was it when it was first spotted by the naked eye, or when it was observed and catalogued by Galileo?

(I am not an expert in these matter, but I have consulted with two expert astronomers.)

What do you suggest to correct these problems?//Hannibal (talk) 16:47, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, for the unconfirmed and dubious, I think dubious should be reserved for objects that are proven not to exist (Gliese 581 d, Gliese 581 g, Gliese 667Ce) and unconfirmed should be for objects that haven't been proven if they exist or not (Gliese 667Cf, Tau Ceti e, the Kepler candidates).
 * The discovery dates, I don't see any issue with it since we can't put a date of when they were discovered because mankind has known about them for so long even if their true nature wasn't understood.
 * I don't see how we can list the planets without using PHL's terminology to make it easier to understand why these planets are on the list and their likely hood to be 'earth-like'. Perhaps altering the key to make things clearer as to what the terms mean could help.
 * --Omega13a (talk) 20:23, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Saturn and Jupiter, along with their moons
I've considered for a while and would like to make this idea public for discussion. Saturn and Jupiter are both gas giants, like our Sun. They both have small collections of orbiting material. We call this material a 'ring'. Both also have 'moons', a few of which recent research has shown to be habitable (i.e. Europa, Titan). In our table in this article, Titan and Europa are not included in the list of habitable exoplanets. I understand they may not be considered part of our "solar system" but I believe our concept of the "solar system" is slightly skewed. After all, for an individual standing on the surface of Titan, or the surface of Europa, would not the main source of light be either Saturn or Jupiter, respectively? If I am misinformed, please correct me. Perhaps its past time for us to redraw the map of our solar system to show that the asteroid belt of our sun, Sol, may actually appear to be a set of rings from farther afield. Haerdt (talk) 13:46, 06 November 2014 (UTC)
 * They're firmly part of the Solar System (which is the Sun and all material in orbit, directly or indirectly). These moons receive more light from the Sun than from their parent planets, because that light is only reflected off the latter's surfaces. They do receive, however, much tidal energy from their parent planets, which heats up their interiors (which is why many can easily sustain subsurface oceans of liquid water). Although they may harbor life in subsurface oceans (among a bunch of other moons in the outer Solar System and (icy) dwarf planets, even potentially Ceres), they are not close to being "habitable" to humans, which is what this article is about, really. --JorisvS (talk) 10:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)


 * If your looking for a list of Potentially habitable moons it can be found here, it also includes small solar system objects. This (List of potentially habitable exoplanets) list include planets and planets only. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 14:10, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

ESI for venus
Why the venus has here an ESI of 0.78?? In the source the venus has an ESI of 0.444.

data_solar_ESI.txt refered in http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/dec/05/habitable-exoplanets-catalogue-alien-life. 91.52.22.185 (talk) 17:07, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The source in the article hard to access and I haven't been able to dig up Venus (yet). The table in the article is a terribly outdated mess. It is preferable to use a single source for all, if possible. Note that not only Venus's value in our table and that text file do not match, but also those of Mars and Mercury. --JorisvS (talk) 17:35, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Dubious Vs False Positive.
Since people forgot the difference; False Positive: Occurs from a machine failure, or miscalculation from a bot (Such as a Kepler false positive). Dubious: Of questionable value, usually a miscalculation by Humans however is a more broad word than False Positive.

Its really annoying when people change things around when the original information was correct. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 01:27, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Gliese 581 d
New data proves that Gliese 581 d exists, no word on GJ 581 g. Davidbuddy9 (talk) 01:59, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The |Planetary Habitability Laboratory is leaving it out for now because of this: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6226/1080.3.abstract --Omega13a (talk) 02:58, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Triple vision?
The recent edit deleting a second mention of Kepler-452b raised an issue: what is the correct esi value? This edit puts one at 0.69 & one at 0.862... TREKphiler  any time you're ready, Uhura  23:56, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Kepler-452b
as today, the NASA official Kepler web site does not report the mass of the planet http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/ so while the planet radius is know with good approximation, the density is unknown. Many speculating web site report values from 5 EM to <1. So the ESI index for 452b reported in the article is completely arbitrary, remove it from an enciclopedia--Efa (talk) 20:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Table still needs better explanation
I see there are people here updating with HZA/B/C/etc., but the section is presently marked as "unreferenced", and ... how can Earth have these weird values? I mean, to look at that table you'd think Mars is in the better location! I know the Sun was supposed to be fainter in former times, but (a) Faint young sun paradox isn't really properly explained, and (b) we'd expect as an "overall measure" for other life to have been around roughly the same time as on Earth, right? I just can't help but think that Earth is, by definition, the best place for life in the Solar system and the cosmos, until some other option is proven. And when that table seems to be inconsistent with that, it makes me wonder if it is meaningful at all. Wnt (talk) 20:27, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

New study likely to affect ratings
A study title The Host Stars of Keplers Habitable Exoplanets: Superflares, Rotation and Activity was done on habitable exoplanets.

Wolf 1061c
Too soon? Kortoso (talk) 20:30, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
 * ESI Values have been released by PHL today, they have been included. Not as impressive as everyone had expected.  Davidbuddy9   Talk  00:34, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Implementation of new table
The new table that me and a few other editors have been working on is now finished and can be found here. However I am not sure if I should implement it now or wait for things to settle first? Davidbuddy9  Talk  20:54, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Improving the sourcing and the reported measurements
This edit removes a lot of values that are the sole provenance of a single website. As has been acknowledged at Talk:Earth Similarity Index, the precise "ESI" values are not relevant. Also the qualitative description of the "type" of planet are not found in reliable sources.

The equilibrium temperature is a value that is calculated on the basis of flux alone so is redundant with the flux value. I also think we need to refer to the discovery papers for each planet directly to quote the mass/radii. Most of the transiting exoplanets have no validated mass measurements. Conversely, radial velocity detected ones have no radius measurements.

Thanks.

jps (talk) 15:20, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

2MASS J23062928-0502285
I read an interesting article today about some earth-ish massed planets around a small red "ultra cool" dwarf:

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1615/

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=2MASS+J23062928-0502285

I originally posted this in the exoplanet talk. I don't know if these planets are "confirmed" or not. The article seems to suggest that this is the dimmest(?) star we have found potential habitable planets around though. I'm not going to add it myself because I don't know the criteria here.Autumn Wind (talk) 18:18, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Update: Sorry, it said ultra cool dwarf. So I'm guessing that despite all the pictures out there, its a brown dwarf.--Autumn Wind (talk) 14:02, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Its not a Brown dwarf. It's mass is >0.075 Msun and it does fuse hydrogen to helium. Its just really "cool" in a temperature sense. Now known as TRAPPIST-1.  Davidbuddy9   Talk  05:07, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Inclusion of TRAPPIST-1d
Although the high uncertainties, it could be inside or outside the habitable zone of the star. See this. And of course PHL made a statement on it too, which you can checkout the archive here if it had been removed by the time you are reading this.  Davidbuddy9   Talk  05:07, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

"Notable exoplanets – Kepler Space Telescope" under Previous candidates section?
Having these images under the Previous candidates section seems a bit odd to me (although it may just be me). I think maybe it should be moved up above the list probably where readers are more likely to see it. It may also be confusing to have an image portraying Kepler's most notable potentially habitable exoplanets in the "Previous candidates" section. Thoughts?  Davidbuddy9   Talk  21:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I moved it there because having it at the top isn't really "styling" IMO. If you don't like it, I could try having it at the top right of the article. --MarioProtIV (talk/contribs) 02:29, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I simply made a new section at the bottom of the page in this edit. TRAPPIST-1 does a similar thing in which images and showcased media is located in a "Gallery" section so I simply did that here.  Davidbuddy9   Talk  18:42, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Table columns? and initial sort criterion?
What do the table columns Flux and Teq mean? - not even I, who knows quite a lot about physics, has any clue ... (Edit - I have added links.) And what is the initial sort criterion for the list? - I (think that I) could not return to the original list by clicking on any header. --User:Haraldmmueller 08:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

Many of the values in the mass and radius columns of the exoplanet tables list three values separated by dashes. What are those values? Upper limit, best estimate, lower limit? It would be good if this were clarified somewhere in the text above the tables. These values appear to come from the PHL website, but I can't find an explanation of the numbers there, either. Inositol (talk) 23:24, 26 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Another wrinkle is that (currently) four of the planets have their mass prefixed with the "≥". This means that the mass column doesn't sort properly.  Would it be possible to replace "≥  1.3" with "1.3 (minimum)", or reasonable equivalent?  So long as some entries list three values, for maximum, most likely and minimum mass this shouldn't make that field wider, or much wider.  And the column would then sort properly.  Geo Swan (talk) 22:44, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Reintroduction of Earth Similarity Index
The ESI was a useful metric for evaluating how similar an exoplanet was to Earth, and reintroduction of an ESI section in the table would provide valuable and relevant information to the article. Synapticrelay (talk) 23:07, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * We had a debate about ESI at WT:WikiProject_Astronomy/Archive_24 The conclusion was that ESI is not a sufficiently established metric within the scientific community, and that it normally shouldn't be used in articles. Exceptions can be made if there is agreement that it's appropriate, but that's probably not going to happen here unless there has been a significant increase in scientific usage of ESI. Alsee (talk) 11:04, 11 January 2017 (UTC)