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20 Years of Hubble Science

Three astronomers in NASA Goddard's Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory discuss how Hubble's coronagraph and resulting images have helped scientists find planets orbiting distant stars.

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NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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The artist's concept depicts Kepler-69c, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
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Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
Animation of a frozen planet, similar to worlds in our own solar system's Kuiper Belt.
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Kuiper Belt World
Kuiper Belt World
Large gas-giant planets like Jupiter may be more rare in the galaxy than small, rocky worlds like Earth.
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Where are the Giants?
Where are the Giants?
Our Sun is just one out of over 200 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Sun is located in the Orion arm of our galaxy about 25,000 light years from the center of the Galaxy.
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Kepler's view of the galaxy
Kepler's view of the galaxy
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), the most versatile spectrograph ever to fly on Hubble, ceased operations in August 2004 due to the failure of its power supply. The STIS instrument's ac...
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STIS Repair: The Quest for Renewed Exploration
STIS Repair: The Quest for Renewed Exploration
Watch what happens in the life of a star and its planets. This version of the video has no text overlays.
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Life and Death of a Planetary System
Life and Death of a Planetary System: No Text
A new NASA-sponsored website, DiskDetective.org, lets the public discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
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Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
This artist's rendition shows one possible appearance for the planet HD 219134b, the nearest confirmed rocky exoplanet found to date outside our solar system.
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Hot, Rocky World (Artist's Concept)
Hot, Rocky World (Artist's Concept)
The Kepler photometer is lowered onto the spacecraft in a clean room.
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Kepler Photometer Being Lowered onto Spacecraft
Kepler Photometer Being Lowered onto Spacecraft
These slides compare the density and illumination of planets in our Solar System with those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
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A comparison of the density and illumination of planets in our Solar System with those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
TRAPPIST-1 & Solar System Comparison
In this artist's concept, a distant, life-bearing world orbits two stars instead of one, seen from the surface in a pink sky – yet in some ways still might be considered similar to Earth.
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Artist's rendering of exoplanet surface
Marble in the Sky: the Hunt for Another Earth
Astronomers were elated to find clear skies on a Neptune-size planet called HAT-P-11b, as illustrated here. Without clouds to block their view, they were able to identify water vapor molecules in t...
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Seeing Starlight Through a Planet's Rim (Artist's Concept)
Seeing Starlight Through a Planet's Rim (Artist's Concept)
If you visited Kepler-16b, what colors do you think you’d see? Download the coloring page based on our Exoplanet Travel Bureau poster for the world with two suns.
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If you visited Kepler-16b, what colors do you think you’d see? Download the coloring page based on our Exoplanet Travel Bureau poster for the world with two suns.
Kepler-16b Coloring Page
Artist's impression of the five-Earth mass planet, Gliese 581 c, found in the habitable zone around the red dwarf Gliese 581, with the instrument HARPS on the ESO 3.6-m telescope.
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The Earth-like Planet Gliese 581c (Artist's Impression)
The Earth-like Planet Gliese 581c (Artist's Impression)
Audience: 3rd grade and older  This slide shows how dramatically different the planets in our solar system are in size.
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This slide shows how dramatically different the planets in our solar system are in size
Comparison of Planet Sizes: Solar Systems
This artist's concept illustrates the idea that rocky, terrestrial worlds like the inner planets in our Solar System may be plentiful, and diverse, in the Universe.
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Rocky, Terrestrial Worlds
Rocky, Terrestrial Worlds
A planet’s density is determined by its composition as well as its size: Gravity compresses the material a planet is made of, increasing the planet’s density. Uncompressed density adjusts for the e...
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Infographic od TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets
TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanets Solar System Comparison
NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
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Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
This artist concept illustrates how a massive collision of objects, perhaps as large as the planet Pluto, smashed together to create the dust ring around the nearby star Vega. New observations from...
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Massive Smash-Up at Vega
Massive Smash-Up at Vega
Spitzer Mission Manager Joseph Hunt stands in Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on Jan. 30, 2020, declaring the spacecraft decommissioned and the Spitzer ...
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Men and women applauding in mission control as Spitzer's mission is declared over.
Spitzer Mission Manager Declares End of Mission
Audience: 5th grade and older Observed exoplanets are very hot, so much so that many common metals would melt.
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This slides illustrates that observed exoplanets are very hot, so much so that many common metals would melt.
Comparison of Metal Phases on Exoplanets - Quiz
Audience: 3rd grade and older This slide shows how far the planets are from their respective stars and how that influences how hot they are.
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This slide shows how far the planets are from their respective stars and how that influences how hot they are.
Comparison of Exoplanets Locations
The results from Kepler will come from measuring the brightness of the stars. The data will look like an EKG showing the heart beat. Whenever a planet passes in front of its parent star as viewed f...
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Kepler Transit Graph
Kepler Transit Graph
This slide illustrates how planets form from dust over a few hundred million years inside protoplanetary disks. Steps illustrated in this slide include planetesimal, protoplanets, giant, and rocky ...
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an illustration of how planets form from dust over a few hundred million years
Planet Formation
Planets having atmospheres rich in helium may be common in our galaxy, according to a new theory based on data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These planets would be around the mass of Neptune...
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Helium-Shrouded Planets (Artist's Concept)
Helium-Shrouded Planets (Artist's Concept)

Explore Alien Worlds

Exoplanet Travel Bureau

This set of travel posters envision a day when the creativity of scientists and engineers will allow us to do things we can only dream of now.
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Strange New Worlds

Explore an interactive gallery of some of the most intriguing and exotic planets discovered so far.
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A planetary tour through time. The ancients debated the existence of planets beyond our own; now we know of thousands.

Historic Timeline

A planetary tour through time. The ancients debated the existence of planets beyond our own; now we know of thousands.
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