Long description

The figure illustrates the masses of exoplanets plotted against their orbital periods as a graph. The horizontal axis is labelled ‘orbital period (in units of years)’, and ranges from 10 raised to the negative fourth power to 10 raised to the fourth power in increments of 100 units. The vertical axis is labelled ‘mass (in units of Earth Masses)’, and ranges from 10 raised to the negative second power to 10 raised to the fifth power in multiples of 10 units. In the graph, various types of entities are plotted as clusters of points. Solar System planets are plotted as white circles. Exoplanets detected via different methods are also shown. Those from the radial-velocity method are shown as a red squares, the transit method are yellow diamonds, the microlensing method are green triangles, direct imaging are blue triangles and the astrometry method are dark-blue hexagons. A dashed horizontal line is drawn from 10 raised to the zeroth power on the vertical axis. A dashed vertical line is drawn from 10 raised to the zeroth power on the horizontal axis at. At the intersection of these two lines, a white circle labelled ‘Earth’ is shown. The other planets of the Solar System are shown at the following position on the graph: Mercury at approximately (10 raised to the negative first power, 10 raised to the negative 1.2 power); Venus at approximately (10 raised to the negative 0.2 power, 10 raised to the negative 0.9 power); Mars at approximately (10 raised to the 0.3 power, 10 raised to the negative first power); Jupiter at approximately (10 raised to the 1.1 power, 10 raised to the 2.5 power); Saturn at approximately (10 raised to the 1.5 power, 10 squared); Uranus at approximately (10 raised to the 1.8 power, 10 raised to the first power); and Neptune at approximately (10 squared, 10 raised to the first power). A cluster of red squares is shown between approximately (10 raised to the negative second power, 10 raised to the zeroth power) to approximately (10 raised to the negative second power, 10 raised to the fourth power) and approximately (10 squared, 10 raised to the fourth power). A cluster of yellow diamonds is shown to the left of the dashed vertical line. A cluster of green triangles is shown to the right of the dashed vertical line. A cluster of blue triangles is shown between approximately 10 raised to the zeroth power and 10 raised to the fourth power on the horizontal axis. A small cluster of dark-blue hexagons is shown between (10 raised to the zeroth power, 10 raised to the third power) and (10 raised to the second power, and 10 raised to the fourth power).