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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.

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ESO

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An artist's conception shows the Kepler-10 system, home to two rocky planets. In the foreground is Kepler-10c, a planet that weighs 17 times as much as Earth and is more than twice as large in size. Planet formation theorists are challenged to explain how such a massive world could have formed.
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This artist's concept illustrates the idea that rocky, terrestrial worlds like the inner planets in our Solar System may be plentiful, and diverse, in the Universe.
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Rocky, Terrestrial Worlds
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Volunteers using DiskDetective, a NASA-sponsored citizen science website to find potential planetary nurseries, have made 1 million classifications in less than a year. Goddard astrophysicist Marc Kuchner, the project's principal investigator, explains how it works.
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'Disk Detectives' Top 1 Million Classifications in Search for Planetary Habitats
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Kepler Photometer Being Lowered onto Spacecraft
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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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Comparison between Earth and Kepler-452b and their host stars
Comparison between Earth and Kepler-452b and their host stars
Learn more about how to use the basic functions of Eyes on Exoplanets
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Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b. The rings are shown eclipsing the young sun-like star J1407, as they would have appeared in early 2007.
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J1407b: Super-Saturn
J1407b: Super-Saturn
Highlighted are 12 new planet candidates from the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in the stars' habitable zone—the range of distances from a star where liquid water could exist on the surface of an orbiting planet.
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Twelve New Small Kepler Habitable Zone Candidates
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An interactive 3D planet model of WASP-12b.
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This artist’s impression shows how the newly discovered super-Earth surrounding the nearby star GJ1214 may look.
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GJ1214b
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This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks.
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Kepler focal plane assembly in a clean room.
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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.
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Explore Alien Worlds

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