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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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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 longer than ours. That places it quite comfortably in the habitable zone of a star very much like our sun.
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What if there is some place like home?
What if there is some place like home?
This graph of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows how astronomers located a hot spot on a distant gas planet named upsilon Andromedae b -- and learned that it was in the wrong place.
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How to Find a Planetary Hot Spot
How to Find a Planetary Hot Spot
Five years ago today, on March 6, 2009, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope rocketed into the night skies above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to find planets around other stars, called exoplanets, in search of potentially habitable worlds.
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Kepler Marks Five Years in Space
Kepler Marks Five Years in Space
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
While there is much debate over which exoplanet discovery is considered the "first," one stands out from the rest. In 1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi b, forever changing the way we see the universe and our place in it. 
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Greetings from your First Exoplanet
Greetings from your First Exoplanet
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.
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Grazing in the gap
Grazing in the gap
This artist's concept shows a Jupiter-like planet, called Upsilon Andromedae b, soaking up the scorching rays of its nearby star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope determined that this planet is two-faced, with one side perpetually in the cold dark, and the other forever blistering under the heat of its star.
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Exotic World Blisters Under the Sun
Exotic World Blisters Under the Sun
This artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f, the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone -- a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signals a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth.
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Kepler-186f, the First Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone (Artist's Concept)
Kepler-186f, the First Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone (Artist's Concept)
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.
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VLT image of the protoplanet around the young star HD 100546
VLT image of the protoplanet around the young star HD 100546
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star like our sun, approximately 210 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.
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A Tiny Planet (Artist's Concept)
A Tiny Planet (Artist's 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 closeup of an image captured by the SOFI instrument on ESOs New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 in infrared light.
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The free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
The free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
This diagram shows how astronomers observed a distant gas giant planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-169 using microlensing.
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Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
This artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body.
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It's Raining Comets
It's Raining Comets
This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light and was obtained over a period of 1.25 hours on June 14 and 15, 2012.
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Planetary Family Portrait
Planetary Family Portrait
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
This artist's concept illustrates the hottest planet yet observed in the Universe. The scorching ball of gas, a "hot Jupiter" called HD 149026b, is about 3 times hotter than the surface of Venus.
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Blacker than Black
Blacker than Black
There is only one planet we know of so far that is teeming with life–– Earth. If we want to find life on other planets, we start with the ingredients we know at home.
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Goldilocks Zone
Goldilocks Zone
This sky map shows the location of the star HD 219134 circle), host to the nearest confirmed rocky planet found to date outside of our solar system.
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Location of Nearest Rocky Exoplanet Known
Location of Nearest Rocky Exoplanet Known
Celebrate your rocking single status with a rogue planet, the world without a star.
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Illustration of a rogue planet.
Rogue planet Valentine
Relative sizes of Kepler habitable zone planets discovered as of 2013 April 18. Except for Earth, these are artists' renditions.
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Lining Kepler Habitable Zone Planets Up
Lining Kepler Habitable Zone Planets Up
Exoplanet atmospheres might one day reveal the presence of life.
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Through the Looking Glass
Through the Looking Glass
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is an alien world just two-thirds the size of Earth one of the smallest on record.
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Exoplanet is Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close (Artist's Concept)
Exoplanet is Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close (Artist's Concept)
Close-up of the planet Fomalhaut b as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Fomalhaut b was discovered in Hubble data in 2008.
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HST ACS/HRC Wide View of Fomalhaut b Planet in 2004 and 2006
HST ACS/HRC Wide View of Fomalhaut b Planet in 2004 and 2006
This image captured by the SOFI instrument on ESOs New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory shows the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 in infrared light.
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The free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 (annotated)
The free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9 (annotated)

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