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Infographic: Profile of planet Kepler-452b

Infographic: Profile of planet Kepler-452b

The first Earth-size planet discovered around a near solar twin, the discovery of Kepler-452b brings us closer than ever to finding an Earth-like planet.

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Like Luke Skywalker's planet "Tatooine" in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet, Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like Saturn. Prospects for life on this unusual world aren't good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery indicates that the movie's iconic double-sunset is anything but science fiction.
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Kepler-16b
Where your shadow always has company
Artist's impression of a transiting Jupiter-mass exoplanet around a star slightly more massive than the Sun, such as the one discovered around SWEEPS-04.
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During 9.6 years in orbit, the Kepler space telescope observed more than half a million stars and discovered more than 2,600 planets. See the mission by the numbers.
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Kepler was in orbit 9.6 years, used 3.12 gallons of fuel, observed 530,506 stars and led to the discovery of 2,662 planets.
NASA's Kepler Mission By the Numbers
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 brightness is represented on the vertical axis, and time on the horizontal axis. The data at left show infrared light from the dust around the star back in 2012. Between 2012 and 2013, Spitzer had to stop observing the star because it was located behind the sun, as seen from Spitzer's Earth-trailing orbit.
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Witnessing a Planetary Wreckage
Witnessing a Planetary Wreckage
If astronomers could somehow pull planets out of the sky and analyze them in the laboratory, it might look something like this artistically altered image illustrating new research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
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An Astronomer's Fantasy: Planets in the Lab
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This graph shows the brightness variations of the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026 measured simultaneously by both NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.
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Probing Brown Dwarf Layers
This artist's concept shows the Kepler spacecraft.
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Kepler in Space (Artist Concept)
Kepler in Space (Artist Concept)
In the star cluster NGC 6811, astronomers have found two planets smaller than Neptune orbiting sun-like stars.
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First Transiting Planets in a Star Cluster Discovered
First Transiting Planets in a Star Cluster Discovered
The planet GJ 1214b, shown here in an artist's conception with two hypothetical moons, orbits a "red dwarf" star 40 light-years from Earth. GJ 1214b has a radius of about 2.7 times that of Earth and is about 6.5 times as massive, putting it squarely into the class of exoplanets known as super-Earths.
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Super-Earth Exposed (Artist's Concept)
Super-Earth Exposed (Artist's Concept)
The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) will soon get its first "taste" of exoplanets, helping astronomers decipher their chemical composition.
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Exoplanets Soon to Gleam in the Eye of NESSI
Exoplanets Soon to Gleam in the Eye of NESSI
A list of current and future missions that have a role in searching for new worlds.
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Exoplanet Missions
Exoplanet Missions
This artist's concept illustrates what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical alien planet in a star system with an asteroid belt 25 times as massive as the one in our own solar system (alien system above, ours below).
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Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own
Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own
A team of researchers has devised a way to measure the internal properties of stars—a method that offers more accurate assessments of their orbiting planets.
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Verified by vibration
Verified by vibration
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.
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Kepler-76b's transiting orbit
Kepler-76b's transiting orbit
The graphic tells NASA's Kepler spacecraft's story by the numbers from the moment it began hunting for planets outside our solar system on May 12, 2009.
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Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting)
Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting)
A truly doomed planet, WASP-12b is being cannibalized by its star.
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It's a Star-Eat-Planet World
It's a Star-Eat-Planet World
The diversity of exoplanets is large — more than 800 planets outside the Solar System have been found to date, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed.
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An Exoplanet Seen From Its Moon
An Exoplanet Seen From Its Moon
PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of planets called rogue, or free-floating, planets. Wandering alone in the galaxy, they do not orbit a parent star.  These rogue planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation. Once they cool down, they will be dancing in the dark.
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PSO J318.5-22
Where the Nightlife Never Ends
Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially 'habitable zone' around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star's red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that's very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, NASA's planet hunting telescope.
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Kepler 186f
Where the Grass is Always Redder
An artist's illustration of Kepler-64b or PH1, a planet discovered by volunteers from the Planet Hunters citizen science project. PH1, shown in the foreground, is the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double-star that, in turn, is orbited by a second distant pair of stars. The phenomenon is called a circumbinary planet in a four-star system.
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Kepler-64b: Four Star Planet
Kepler-64b: Four Star Planet
This artist's conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are dim star-like bodies that lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel as stars do.
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Cold and Close Celestial Orb (Artist's Concept)
Cold and Close Celestial Orb (Artist's Concept)
Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?
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In the Zone: How Scientists Search for Habitable Planets
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This image shows our own back yard, astronomically speaking, from a vantage point about 30 light-years away from the sun. It highlights the population of tiny brown dwarfs recently discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE (red circles).
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Highlighting our Tiniest Neighbors
Highlighting our Tiniest Neighbors
First light image from two of the CCD modules of the Kepler mission.
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Kepler first light image: 2 CCD modules
Kepler first light image: 2 CCD modules
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 star that belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type.
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Kepler-69 and the Solar System
Kepler-69 and the Solar System

Explore Alien Worlds

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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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