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 ...

This artist's concept illustrates an icy planet-forming disk around a young star called TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the Hydra, or Sea Serpent, constellation.

Illustration of Earth's surface as it might have looked 3.8 billion years ago.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have taken the first ever image of the snow line in an infant planetary system.

This plot shows the masses and sizes of the smallest exoplanets for which both quantities have been measured. The solar system planets (shown in red) are for comparison.

There are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog - an increase of 521 since the release of the previous catalog in Jan. 2015.

This plot shows data obtained from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or OGLE, telescope located in Chile, during a "microlensing" event. Microlensing ...

This slide explains the transit method for exoplanet detection.

The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) instrument set its eyes on a dusty star system called Eta Corvi, depicted here in this artist's concept. Recent collisions between comets and roc...

Astronomers detect lowest-mass planet around a star like the sun found using direct imaging techniques.

Up-close picture of Kepler CCD hardware.

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...

Kepler is launched at night (10:48 PM EST) on a Delta 2 expendable launch vehicle.

A hypothetical planet is depicted here moving through the habitable zone and then further out into a long, cold winter.

The analysis of the first three years of Kepler data have revealed more than 3,600 candidate worlds. The diagram plots the planet candidates by oribtal period on the x-axis and size relative to Ear...

Kepler arriving at the Kennedy Space Center.

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.

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 ...

During the four years of science operations, the pointing precision of the spacecraft was controlled to within a few milli-arcseconds. That is the equivalent of keeping your gaze steady on a grain ...

Astronomers have discovered one of the most distant planets known, a gas giant about 13,000 light-years from Earth, called OGLE-2014-BLG-0124L. The planet was discovered using a technique called mi...

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.

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...

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 slide provides the answers to common questions about black holes.

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