Skip Navigation

Multimedia

HR 8799: An Early Age of a Planetary System

HR 8799: An Early Age of a Planetary System

Artist's rendering of the planetary system HR 8799 at an early stage of its evolution, showing the planet HR879cc, a disk of gas and dust, and interior planets.

Credit

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics/Mediafarm

ENLARGE

Related

A series of images of a distant gas giant reveal its orbit around its star Beta Pictoris, located some 60 light-years from Earth.
More
Gemini Planet Imager shows darting exoplanet
Gemini Planet Imager shows darting exoplanet
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.
More
How to Measure Exoplanet Light
How to Measure Exoplanet Light
From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged.
More
Residential Candidates
Residential Candidates
Using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the size of a world outside our solar system, as illustrated in this artist's c...
More
Gauging an Alien World's Size (Artist Concept)
Gauging an Alien World's Size (Artist Concept)
The Kepler spacecraft, responsible for thousands of new potential disoveries.
More
Kepler Spacecraft
Kepler Spacecraft
This artist's concept illustrates how planetary systems arise out of massive collisions between rocky bodies.
More
The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems (Annotated)
The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems (Annotated)
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...
More
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision
Researchers are getting to know some of our sun's closest and smallest neighbors.
More
Free-floating failed star
Free-floating failed star
The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69, a two-planet system about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The two planets of Kepler-69 orbit a sta...
More
Kepler-69 and the Solar System
Kepler-69 and the Solar System
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...
More
Kepler's Planet Candidates, November 2013
Kepler's Planet Candidates, November 2013
This is an artist's concept of a hypothetical 10-million-year-old star system. The bright blur at the center is a star much like our sun. The other orb in the image is a gas-giant planet like Jupit...
More
Gas Giants Form Quickly
Gas Giants Form Quickly
This image from the NACO system on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows a candidate protoplanet in the disc of gas and dust around the young star HD100546.
More
VLT image of the protoplanet around the young star HD 100546
VLT image of the protoplanet around the young star HD 100546
Cluster of Stars in Kepler's Sight - This image zooms into a small portion of Kepler's full field of view -- an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy.
More
Star Cluster NGC 6791 from Kepler First Light Image
Star Cluster NGC 6791 from Kepler First Light Image
Hubble finds a deep-blue exoplanet that may feature pummeling showers of glass rain moving at 4,500 mph. Care to visit?
More
NASA's Hubble Finds a True Blue Planet
NASA's Hubble Finds a True Blue Planet
A whole new category of planets, Super Earths are quite common in our galaxy.
More
Super Earth—Super Girth
Super Earth—Super Girth
This graphic shows Kepler-76b's orbit around a yellow-white, type F star located 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
More
Kepler-76b's transiting orbit
Kepler-76b's transiting orbit
The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62, a five-planet system about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.
More
Kepler-62 and the Solar System
Kepler-62 and the Solar System
This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 189733b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of th...
More
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: An Exoplanet Atmosphere
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: An Exoplanet Atmosphere
NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen and TESS Project Scientist Padi Boyd discuss Kepler's legacy, the search for life and the big question: Are we alone?
More
NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen and TESS Project Scientist Padi Boyd discuss Kepler's legacy, the search for life and the big question: Are we alone?
Next Steps in the Search for Life
This diagram shows how astronomers observed a distant gas giant planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-169 using microlensing.
More
Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
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.
More
20 Years of Hubble Science
20 Years of Hubble Science
A list of current and future missions that have a role in searching for new worlds.
More
Exoplanet Missions
Exoplanet Missions
Inverted image (dark stars on light sky) Stars in the image are all brighter than magnitude 18.5. Stars brighter than 11.5 are "saturated" (all look the same brightness in the image).
More
Kepler Full Focal Plane Image - Inverted
Kepler Full Focal Plane Image - Inverted
This artist's concept illustrates two planetary systems -- 55 Cancri (top) and our own. Blue lines show the orbits of planets, including the dwarf planet Pluto in our solar system.
More
Our Solar System's Cousin?
Our Solar System's Cousin?
This animation shows the first-ever map of the surface of an exoplanet, or a planet beyond our solar system.
More
Spitzer Maps an Exoplanet
Spitzer Maps an Exoplanet

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.
More

Strange New Worlds

Explore an interactive gallery of some of the most intriguing and exotic planets discovered so far.
More
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.
More