This slide explains and illustrates what a "habitable zone" is, and how it would change based on the size of the host star.

This diagram shows how astronomers observed a distant gas giant planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-169 using microlensing.

This graph of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows how astronomers located a hot spot on a distant gas planet named upsilon Andromedae b -- and learned that it was in the wrong place.

The Kepler space telescope will remain for decades in orbit around the Sun, weaving in and out of Earth’s orbital path.

A graphic of present and future exoplanet missions from space agencies and observatories around the world.

On March 21, 2022, the number of known exoplanets passed 5,000 according to the NASA Exoplanet Archive. This animation and sonification tracks humanity's discovery of the planets beyond our solar s...

The first extra-solar planet detected around a star similar to the Sun was 51 Peg. It has about the mass of Jupiter. But unlike Jupiter, which is five times as far from the Sun as Earth and orbits ...

When we describe different types of exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – what do we mean by "hot Jupiters," "warm Neptunes," and "super-Earths"? 

A possible newfound planet spins through a clearing in a nearby star's dusty, planet-forming disc.

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation L...

Jupiter-size exoplanets orbiting close to their stars have upended ideas about how giant planets form. Finding young members of this planet class could help answer key questions.

On this episode of Q&Alien, we talk about what the term "habitable zone" means - and what it doesn't.

Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called micr...

The basic chemistry for life has been detected in a second hot gas planet, HD 209458b, depicted in this artist's concept.

When a planet passes directly between a star and its observer, it dims the star's light by a measurable amount. Light curves get complicated when more planets are transiting a star. The combined li...

This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope called a spectrum tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high cloud...

An animation explaining how the hybrid Lyot coronagraph works. Watch the longer version here.

This artist's concept shows how astronomers use the unique orbit of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and a depth-perceiving trick called parallax to determine the distance of dark planets, black hole...

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 ...

This video shows an artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9.

Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star that may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.

A unique feature of the seventh Kepler candidate catalog is that it is the first to fully automate the assessment of transit-like signals. The total height of each bar shows the total number of Kep...

The first planet to have its clouds mapped showed us what weather looked like on a planet outside our solar system.

Kepler is NASA’s 10th Discovery mission. It is designed specifically to detect Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of solar-like stars.

Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter’s mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet...