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

HD 80606b is a gas giant planet in an eccentric orbit around its star. Every 111 days, the planet passes within 2.8 million miles of the star's surface. Animated without dissolves.

On August 25, 2003, NASA launched the Spitzer Space Telescope to reveal secrets of the infrared universe.

Kepler focal plane assembly in a clean room.

Astronomers can detect the presence of disks of dust orbiting distant stars by measuring how the combined light from the star and disk changes across different wavelengths.

A night test of a small-scale starshade model shows how the starshade could block bright light from telescopes.

Astronomers were surprised to see these data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in January 2013, showing a huge eruption of dust around a star called NGC 2547-ID8. In this plot, infrared brightnes...

A series of images of a distant gas giant reveal its orbit around its star Beta Pictoris, located some 60 light-years from Earth.

Once the third stage finishes its work, Kepler will have sufficient energy to leave the gravitational pull of Earth and go into orbit around the Sun, trailing behind Earth and slowly drifting away ...

If life exists on some of the exoplanets that Kepler finds, it may exist in forms similar to what we see in some of Earth's most extreme conditions.

ESO’s VLT identified our Sun's oldest twin and provides new clues about stars that may host terrestrial rocky planets.

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...

After a 43-minute coast in low Earth orbit, the Kepler launch vehicle's second stage is fired for a final time.

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...

The first exoplanet discovered around a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi b made us question what we knew of our universe and launched the search for new worlds.

The flower you see in this animation isn’t NASA’s attempt to celebrate the coming of spring. It’s actually the latest design in a cutting-edge effort to take pictures of planets orbiting stars far ...

Animation of the Kepler spacecraft ejecting its dust cover.

Every star has a habitable zone, but where that zone lies is different for stars of different sizes and brightness.

The Kepler spacecraft, responsible for thousands of new potential disoveries.

These plots from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show light from a distant planet, GJ 436b, and its star, as measured at six different infrared wavelengths.

The Kepler mission found 1,284 new planets via the transit method. When a planet passes directly between its star and an observer, it dims the star's light by a measurable amount.

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

For the first time since exoplanets, or planets around stars other than the sun, were discovered almost 20 years ago, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent st...

Audience: 3rd grade and older  This slide shows how dramatically different the planets in our solar system are in size.

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...