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Coronagraph explanation 2 minutes

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

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NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first transiting circumbinary system -- multiple planets orbiting two suns -- 4,900 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, proving that more t...
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NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Multiple Planets Orbiting Twin Suns
NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Multiple Planets Orbiting Twin Suns
How do coronagraphs find exoplanets? Find out in this animation narrated by Dr. Nick Siegler, Technology Manager of the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program.
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The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets
The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets
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. Kepler will...
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Kepler's View of the Galaxy
Kepler's View of the Galaxy
This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks.
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Chemical Soups Around Cool Stars
Chemical Soups Around Cool Stars
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...
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Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
This chart shows most of the stars visible with the unaided eye on a clear night. The star Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern sky (marked with a red circle). It lies just ...
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Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)
Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)
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...
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Video infographic showing numbers of exoplanet discoveries over time.
Video: 5,000 Exoplanets: Listen to the Sounds of Discovery (NASA Data Sonification)
Learn more about cool tricks you can do in Eyes on Exoplanets.
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Eyes on Exoplanets Tutorial 3: Tips and Tricks
Eyes on Exoplanets Tutorial 3: Tips and Tricks
This animation shows the prototype starshade, a giant structure designed to block the glare of stars so that future space telescopes can take pictures of planets. This video also includes testing o...
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Blocking light to see planets beyond the solar system
Blocking light to see planets beyond the solar system
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one.
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Where the Sun Sets Twice (Artist Concept)
Where the Sun Sets Twice (Artist Concept)
This artist's concept illustrates how planetary systems arise out of massive collisions between rocky bodies.
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The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems
The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems
This image from NASA's Kepler spacecraft shows the telescope's field of view taken in a new demonstration mode in late October. A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler's search for ...
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NASA Kepler's Second Light
NASA Kepler's Second Light
This figure charts 30 hours of observations taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of a strongly irradiated exoplanet (an planet orbiting a star beyond our own). It shows the very rapid heating th...
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Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have taken the first ever image of the snow line in an infant planetary system.
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TW Hydrae snow line distance compared to the Solar System
TW Hydrae snow line distance compared to the Solar System
Video of the Kepler spacecraft launch from March 2009.
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Kepler Misson Launch
Kepler Misson Launch
This artists impression shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9. This is the closest such object to the Solar System.
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Artists impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
Artists impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
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
Daniel Fabrycky from the Kepler science team put together a visualization of all the multiple-planet systems discovered by the Kepler spacecraft as of February of 2011.
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Kepler Orrery II
Kepler Orrery II
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.
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GJ 1132 b’s hot interior, the team believes means the planet’s cooler, overlying crust is extremely thin, perhaps only hundreds of feet thick. That’s much too feeble to support anything resembling volcanic mountains. Its flat terrain may also be cracked like an eggshell due to tidal flexing. Hydrogen and other gases could be released through such cracks.
Hubble Finds Evidence that a New Atmosphere May Have Formed on a Rocky Exoplanet (no text)
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
The conception illustration depicts how solar pressure can be used to balance NASA's Kepler spacecraft, keeping the telescope stable enough to continue monitoring distant stars in search of transit...
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Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work
Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work
This infographic explains how NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope can be used in tandem with a telescope on the ground to measure the distances to planets discovered using the "microlensing" technique.
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Infographic: Finding Planets With Microlensing
Infographic: Finding Planets With Microlensing
Ball Aerospace team assembles Kepler spacecraft
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Ball Aerospace team assembles Kepler spacecraft
Ball Aerospace team assembles Kepler spacecraft
This plot of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicates the presence of molecules in the planet WASP-12b -- a super-hot gas giant that orbits tightly around its star.
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Signature of a Carbon-Rich Planet
Signature of a Carbon-Rich Planet
This artist's concept shows planet KELT-9b orbiting its host star, KELT-9. It is the hottest gas giant planet discovered so far.
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Video of the hottest exoplanet KELT-9b orbiting its star.
Video of KELT-9b

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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