Freaking awesome! As you probably know, the Kepler Mission has recently found a huge number of exoplanets, bringing the current total to 1,235 exoplanet candidates. This is simply an amazing feat, and proof that we are living in amazing times. Fifty-four exoplanet candidates are in the habitable zone (the area around a star at which you can have liquid water), and five of those are near-Earth size (less than double the size).

The truly excellent Jer Thorp created this visualization for boing boing. It’s a visualization of the Kepler data, and it is really beautiful. The way the data forms the structure of the graph really grabs attention. Bump it up to HD and enjoy:

Kepler Exoplanet Candidates from blprnt on Vimeo.

The great thing about Kepler is that the data is so huge that scientists need help sorting through it. So Zooniverse has a project Planet Hunters where you can help.