You can combine the usage of zip() with tabulate to create a nicer looking table:

from tabulate import tabulate
headers = ['planet', 'amp', 'mass', 'period', 'ecc']    

amp = [1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4]
mass = [2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4]
period = [3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4]
ecc = [4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4]
planet = range(1, len(amp)+1)

table = zip(planet, amp, mass, period, ecc)
print(tabulate(table, headers=headers, floatfmt=".4f"))

Output:

  planet     amp    mass    period     ecc
--------  ------  ------  --------  ------
       1  1.1000  2.1000    3.1000  4.1000
       2  1.2000  2.2000    3.2000  4.2000
       3  1.3000  2.3000    3.3000  4.3000
       4  1.4000  2.4000    3.4000  4.4000

There are some light and useful python packages for this purpose:

1. tabulate

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/tabulate

from tabulate import tabulate
print(tabulate([['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]], headers=['Name', 'Age']))

Name      Age
------  -----
Alice      24
Bob        19

tabulate has many options to specify headers and table format.

print(tabulate(
    [['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]],
    headers=['Name', 'Age'],
    tablefmt='orgtbl'))

| Name   |   Age |
|--------+-------|
| Alice  |    24 |
| Bob    |    19 |

2. PrettyTable

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PrettyTable

from prettytable import PrettyTable
t = PrettyTable(['Name', 'Age'])
t.add_row(['Alice', 24])
t.add_row(['Bob', 19])
print(t)

+-------+-----+
|  Name | Age |
+-------+-----+
| Alice |  24 |
|  Bob  |  19 |
+-------+-----+

PrettyTable has options to read data from csv, html, sql database. Also you are able to select subset of data, sort table and change table styles.

3. texttable

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/texttable

from texttable import Texttable
t = Texttable()
t.add_rows([['Name', 'Age'], ['Alice', 24], ['Bob', 19]])
print(t.draw())

+-------+-----+
| Name  | Age |
+=======+=====+
| Alice | 24  |
+-------+-----+
| Bob   | 19  |
+-------+-----+

with texttable you can control horizontal/vertical align, border style and data types.

4. termtables

https://github.com/nschloe/termtables

import termtables as tt

string = tt.to_string(
    [["Alice", 24], ["Bob", 19]],
    header=["Name", "Age"],
    style=tt.styles.ascii_thin_double,
    # alignment="ll",
    # padding=(0, 1),
)
print(string)

+-------+-----+
| Name  | Age |
+=======+=====+
| Alice | 24  |
+-------+-----+
| Bob   | 19  |
+-------+-----+

with texttable you can control horizontal/vertical align, border style and data types.

Other options

• terminaltables - Easily draw tables in terminal/console applications from a list of lists of strings. Supports multi-line rows.
• asciitable can read and write a wide range of ASCII table formats via built-in Extension Reader Classes.

A slightly more readable version:

def tabulate(words, termwidth=79, pad=3):
    width = len(max(words, key=len)) + pad
    ncols = max(1, termwidth // width)
    nrows = (len(words) - 1) // ncols + 1
    table = []
    for i in xrange(nrows):
        row = words[i::nrows]
        format_str = ('%%-%ds' % width) * len(row)
        table.append(format_str % tuple(row))
    return '\n'.join(table)

Most notably, I've defined width to include padding and using string formatting to generate a format string to format each row ;).