Skip Navigation

Multimedia

The Earth-like Planet Gliese 581c (Artist's Impression)

The Earth-like Planet Gliese 581c (Artist's Impression)

Artist's impression of the five-Earth mass planet, Gliese 581 c, found in the habitable zone around the red dwarf Gliese 581, with the instrument HARPS on the ESO 3.6-m telescope.

Credit

ESO

ENLARGE

Related

This diagram illustrates how astronomers can capture the elusive spectra of hot-Jupiter planets by comparing observations including light from both the star and planet to those containing just the ...
More
Isolating a Planet's Spectrum
Isolating a Planet's Spectrum
This artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet in the ring of dust around the young star HD 100546.
More
Artist's impression of a gas giant planet forming in the disc around the young star HD 100546
Artist's impression of a gas giant planet forming in the disc around the young star HD 100546
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
This artist's concept shows "The Behemoth," an enormous comet-like cloud of hydrogen bleeding off of a warm, Neptune-sized planet just 30 light-years from Earth. Also depicted is the parent star (a...
More
"Behemoth" Bleeding Atmosphere Around a Warm Exoplanet
"Behemoth" Bleeding Atmosphere Around a Warm Exoplanet
This image from NASA's Kepler mission shows the telescope's full field of view -- an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.
More
Two Zooms in the Kepler Field
Two Zooms in the Kepler Field
A detailed explanation into the workings of the coronagraph and how it can help directly image exoplanets.
More
How will coronagraphs be used to directly image exoplanets and search for life.
The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets
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 - annotated
NASA's Hubble Finds a True Blue Planet - annotated
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
Astronomers have discovered two gas giant planets orbiting stars in the Beehive cluster, a collection of about 1,000 tightly packed stars.
More
Starry Starry Skies (Artist's Concept)
Starry Starry Skies (Artist's Concept)
The flower you see in this picture 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 fr...
More
Flower power: NASA starshade petal prototype
Flower power: NASA starshade petal prototype
Keep your Valentine close with a tidally-locked planet, that always faces its star.
More
Illustration of a tidally-locked planet.
Tidally-locked Valentine
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
A newly discovered exoplanet, Kepler-452b, takes us closer than ever to finding a planet that looks like our own. This super-Earth is 60% larger than our home world, but its year is only 20 days lo...
More
What if there is some place like home?
What if there is some place like home?
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 - illustration only
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision - illustration only
Planets, including those like our own Earth, form from epic collisions between asteroids and even bigger bodies, called proto-planets. Sometimes the colliding bodies are ground to dust, and sometim...
More
Building Planets Through Collisions (Artist's Concept)
Building Planets Through Collisions (Artist's Concept)
An artist's conception of Kepler-78b orbiting its parent star once every 8.5 hours.
More
Kepler-78b
Kepler-78b
The artist's concept depicts a comet-like tail of a possible disintegrating super Mercury-size planet candidate as it transits its parent star named KIC 12557548.
More
Disintegrating Super Mercury-size Planet
Disintegrating Super Mercury-size Planet
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...
More
Map of Exoplanets Found in our Galaxy (Artist's Concept)
Map of Exoplanets Found in our Galaxy (Artist's Concept)
This artist's concept shows planet KELT-9b orbiting its host star, KELT-9. It is the hottest gas giant planet discovered so far.
More
Video of the hottest exoplanet KELT-9b orbiting its star.
Video of KELT-9b
Scientists using data from NASA's Kepler mission have confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.
More
Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin -- Artistic Concept
Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin -- Artistic Concept
A new NASA-sponsored website, DiskDetective.org, lets the public discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
More
Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
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...
More
Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Young stars start out with a massive disk of gas and dust that over time, astronomers think, either diffuses away or coalesces into planets and asteroids.
More
Grazing in the gap
Grazing in the gap
This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star.
More
VLT image of exoplanet HD 95086 b
VLT image of exoplanet HD 95086 b
Artist's concept of the fictional planet Vulcan, orbiting the real star 40 Eridani A.
More
An artist's concept of the fictional world Vulcan around the real star 40 Eridani A.
Vulcan-like planet: Fact or fiction?

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