Courses › The Universe from Scratch › Lesson 7
Are there other Earths out there? · premieres Monday, November 2
Are there other planets like Earth? It is one of the biggest questions in astronomy. The Kepler telescope found thousands of planets, and some of them are in what we call the habitable zone.
In the images, the periods, sizes and stars are the measured ones. The planets' appearance is invented, with colours according to their size. The orbits are drawn circular and in the same plane, and the sizes are enlarged so that they show up.
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Kepler-186 f | First Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone (2014); now marked 'controversial' | Quintana et al. 2014; NASA Exoplanet Archive (Burke et al. 2019) |
| Stars | Kepler-186: 3,788 K, 0.478 M☉; Kepler-62: 4,925 K, 0.69 M☉; Kepler-442: 4,402 K, 0.609 M☉ | NASA Exoplanet Archive, composite table (5 Oct 2026) |
| Kepler-442 b | Radius 1.34 R⊕ (other work: 1.3 to 1.56) | NASA Exoplanet Archive; Torres et al. 2015 |
| Masses | None measured (Kepler-62 b has only an upper limit) | Kepler HZ template (README) |
| Habitable zone | Definition: liquid water possible with a suitable atmosphere | Kopparapu et al. 2014 |
They are Solaris Core Blender templates, built from measured data. You can download them, change the camera and make your own images.
See templates