The galaxy’s premier exoplanet competition returns for its fifth(!) year as #ExoCup2021 gets underway on the 1st of November. 32 exoplanets of all shapes, sizes, and detection techniques will take the to Twitter arena to vie for your votes in the race to crown the Exocup 2021 champion!
Last year’s competition featured some very close bouts, a few dramatic comebacks, and a surprise winner in WD 1856 b. This year promises to be just as action-packed!
The Selection Process
Following the same methodology we used in 2019 and 2020, we looked to the astronomical literature to find the majority of our #ExoCup2020 planets – taking the 24 most-mentioned exoplanets over the past year and putting them directly into the first three 8-planet seeding pots. Also like 2019 and 2020, we limited entry to one planet per system. That left 8 final wild-cards in pot 4, which we hand-picked to include as diverse a field of left-out planets as we could!
Listen to our special episode, Exocast-55b, where we explain our methodology in a little more detail, pick our wildcard planets, and do the drawing for the 4 pools.
The Table
The ExoCup2021 Cards
