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Data

Cumulative number of exoplanets discovered, by method

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Space Exploration & Satellites

About this data

Cumulative number of exoplanets discovered, by method
Cumulative number of planets discovered outside the Solar System, broken down by their first identification method: , , , or other.
Source
NASA (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 8, 2026
Next expected update
January 2027
Date range
1992–2025
Unit
exoplanets

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

NASA – NASA Exoplanet Archive

This dataset makes use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

Transit method: If a planet crosses (or transits) in front of its parent star's disk, then the star's observed brightness drops by a small amount. The amount by which the star dims depends on its size and the planet's size, among other factors.

Radial velocity (or Doppler method): As a planet orbits a star, the star also moves in its small orbit around the system's center of mass. Variations in the star's radial velocity—the speed with which it moves towards or away from Earth—can be detected from displacements in the star's spectral lines due to the Doppler effect.

Microlensing: Microlensing occurs when the gravitational field of a star acts like a lens, magnifying the light of a distant background star. Planets orbiting the lensing star can cause detectable anomalies in the magnification as it varies over time.

Details on other methods of discovery are available on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets

Retrieved on
January 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
NASA Exoplanet Archive, operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

This dataset makes use of the NASA Exoplanet Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

Transit method: If a planet crosses (or transits) in front of its parent star's disk, then the star's observed brightness drops by a small amount. The amount by which the star dims depends on its size and the planet's size, among other factors.

Radial velocity (or Doppler method): As a planet orbits a star, the star also moves in its small orbit around the system's center of mass. Variations in the star's radial velocity—the speed with which it moves towards or away from Earth—can be detected from displacements in the star's spectral lines due to the Doppler effect.

Microlensing: Microlensing occurs when the gravitational field of a star acts like a lens, magnifying the light of a distant background star. Planets orbiting the lensing star can cause detectable anomalies in the magnification as it varies over time.

Details on other methods of discovery are available on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets

Retrieved on
January 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
NASA Exoplanet Archive, operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Cumulative number of exoplanets discovered, by method”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2022) - “Space Exploration and Satellites”. Data adapted from NASA. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

NASA (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

NASA (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Cumulative number of exoplanets discovered, by method” [dataset]. NASA, “NASA Exoplanet Archive” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-exoplanets-by-method.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear