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Increasing the Odds of the Sweep

Increasing the Odds of the Sweep

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.

Credit

ESO

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Illustration of a tidally-locked planet.
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HD 40307 g
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Kepler-76b's transiting orbit
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An unusual, methane-free world is partially eclipsed by its star in this artist's concept.
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Exotic Exoplanet
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 plane...
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Kepler-64b: Four Star Planet
Kepler-64b: Four Star Planet
The telescope studied comets and asteroids, counted stars, scrutinized planets and galaxies, and discovered soccer-ball-shaped carbon spheres in space called buckyballs.
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Spitzer Space Telescope
Spitzer Space Telescope
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. ...
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Planetary Family Portrait
Planetary Family Portrait
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
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This diagram shows how astronomers observed a distant gas giant planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-169 using microlensing.
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Highlighting our Tiniest Neighbors
Highlighting our Tiniest Neighbors
A dusty planetary system (left) is compared to another system with little dust in this artist concept. Dust can make it difficult for telescopes to image planets because light from the dust can out...
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Seeking Planets in the Dust (Artist's Concept)
Seeking Planets in the Dust (Artist's Concept)
For a tidally locked planet there is no day or night, only freezing darkness on one side and burning constant sunlight on the other. The terminator zone is bathed in constant twilight and would lik...
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Earth at Twilight
Tidally locked planets (Earth at Twilight)
The Gliese 581 planetary system now has four known planets
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Gliese 581
Gliese 581
GJ1214b, shown in this artist's view, is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth.
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Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
This artist's animation flies through the Kepler-20 star system, where NASA's Kepler mission discovered the first Earth-size planets around a star beyond our own.
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Video of the hottest exoplanet KELT-9b orbiting its star.
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KOI-961 and its three known planets
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Artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
Artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one.
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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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Infographic: Profile of planet Kepler-452b
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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system. The planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star c...
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HD 209458b
HD 209458b

Explore Alien Worlds

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A planetary tour through time. The ancients debated the existence of planets beyond our own; now we know of thousands.

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