Contact: Sean Raymond
raymond@lasp.colorado.edu
303-735-3729
University of Colorado at Boulder

Schematic View of a Habitable Planetary System

Caption: Schematic view (not to scale) of a habitable planetary system with a "hot Jupiter", compared with our solar system (upper planets). The Solar system has four terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Earth is in the habitable zone, where water can exist on its surface. The other planetary system contains a "hot Earth" a few times larger than the Earth but very close to the star, an ocean-covered planet in the habitable zone, and several icy planets in the outer system.

Credit: Sean Raymond, CU-Boulder, using images from NASA

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