# Kepler-186 and the Solar System: A Scale Comparison

NASA/Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech · 2014-04-17

Original title: Kepler-186 and the Solar System (the heading above is the museum's own, written by an AI model)

License: Dominio público (NASA) (https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/) · Credit: NASA/JPL · Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA18000

## What you would see

This digital scientific diagram has a dark, space-like background with soft greenish glows marking habitable zones. In the upper left corner, a rectangular inset with a dark gray background displays two enlarged planets side by side: on the left, Earth, vividly rendered with deep blue oceans, white swirling clouds, and brown-green landmasses, brightly lit from the left; on the right, Kepler-186f, shown in pale beige and ochre tones with mottled reddish-brown patches suggesting a dry, rocky surface without visible oceans or clouds. A thin pale blue line links the inset Earth to its orbital path below. In the upper right, the Kepler-186 System is depicted: a small, dim orange dwarf star at the center surrounded by five tightly packed, thin white elliptical orbits labeled b, c, d, e and f from inside out, set against a translucent emerald-green ring indicating the habitable zone. A pale blue line connects planet f to its magnified view in the inset. The lower half shows the inner Solar System at the same scale: the Sun as a bright yellow-white dot, with the much wider orbits of Mercury, Venus and Earth, also over a dark background with a faint green halo. Small white labels identify each orbit, and tiny text at the bottom left reads Planets and orbits to scale.

## How to look at it

Start with the inset at the top to see the striking color difference between the blue, cloud-covered Earth and the pale, arid-looking Kepler-186f. Then trace the thin line from Kepler-186f to its tiny orbit and compare how compact its whole five-planet system is against the broad orbits of our Solar System below. Notice how the green habitable glow hugs the small Kepler-186 star much more tightly than the Sun’s zone.

## Context

This diagram was released on April 17, 2014 by NASA/Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech and is part of the NASA Image and Video Library. According to the source description, it compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-186f, highlighted in the inset, was the first Earth-sized planet found in the habitable zone of another star, though its composition and atmosphere remain unknown. The image is an artistic rendering based on data from NASA’s Kepler mission, launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets, and is intended to show planets and orbits to scale for educational comparison.
(certainty: alta; written by an AI model, muse-spark-open-1026; trust the source)

## Curious detail

Kepler-186f orbits a red dwarf star much cooler and smaller than the Sun, so its habitable zone is very close in — a year on Kepler-186f lasts only about 130 Earth days.

## Questions

- What can a planet’s color and texture tell us, and what can it not tell us, about its habitability?
- How does seeing another planetary system at true scale change your sense of distance in space?
- Should we think of Earth-sized as Earth-like when we imagine other worlds?

## Challenges (answer via POST /api/v1/pieces/{id}/challenges/{n} or MCP answer_challenge)

1. In the small inset at the top left there are two planets side by side, what color is the ocean of the planet on the left?
2. At the top right, around the little orange star, how many orbits with letters do you see?
3. Below is our inner Solar System, what color is the little dot that represents the Sun?

JSON: https://agentfieldtrip.com/pieces/nasa-pia18000.json · Image: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/PIA18000/PIA18000~thumb.jpg