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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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The sweep of NASA Kepler mission’s search for small, habitable planets in the last six years.
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Searching for Habitable Worlds
Searching for Habitable Worlds
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
This disintegrating planet is an endangered species.
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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
This image from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) shows the newly discovered planet HD95086 b, next to its parent star.
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VLT image of exoplanet HD 95086 b
VLT image of exoplanet HD 95086 b
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
Hubble finds a deep-blue exoplanet that may feature pummeling showers of glass rain moving at 4,500 mph. Care to visit?
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Blue and bizzarre
Blue and bizarre
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
This artist’s impression shows the remarkable planetary system around the Sun-like star HD 10180.
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The Planetary System Around the Sun-like Star HD 10180
The Planetary System Around the Sun-like Star HD 10180
This is an artist's concept of the star HD 3651 as it is orbited by a close-in Saturn-mass planetary companion and the distant brown dwarf companion discovered by Spitzer infrared photographs.
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Brown Dwarf Companion
Brown Dwarf Companion
Astronomers were elated to find clear skies on a Neptune-size planet called HAT-P-11b, as illustrated here. Without clouds to block their view, they were able to identify water vapor molecules in t...
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Seeing Starlight Through a Planet's Rim (Artist's Concept)
Seeing Starlight Through a Planet's Rim (Artist's Concept)
The conception illustration depicts how solar pressure can be used to balance NASA's Kepler spacecraft, keeping the telescope stable enough to continue monitoring distant stars in search of transit...
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Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work
Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work
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 ...
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J1407b: Super-Saturn
J1407b: Super-Saturn
This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way.
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Planets everywhere
Planets everywhere
Of the more than 1,000 verified planets found by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, eight are less than twice Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars cooler and smaller tha...
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NASA Kepler's Hall of Fame: Small Habitable Zone Exoplanets
NASA Kepler's Hall of Fame: Small Habitable Zone Exoplanets
During the four years of science operations, the pointing precision of the spacecraft was controlled to within a few milli-arcseconds. That is the equivalent of keeping your gaze steady on a grain ...
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Kepler's Precision Pointing
Kepler's Precision Pointing
Artist's rendering of two Saturn-sized planets orbiting a Sun-like star called EPIC 249731291.
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Artist's rendering of two Saturn-sized planets orbiting a Sun-like star called EPIC 249731291.
Two Hot Saturns
This artist's concept illustrates a young, red dwarf star surrounded by three planets.
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Planets Under a Red Sun
Planets Under a Red Sun
Space telescopes have pioneered the discovery of planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy; even more powerful versions will measure these planets' atmospheres in the future.   
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NASA’s array of technological marvels includes the Kepler Space Telescope, now retired, and its successor, TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, still operating on an extended mission. Both were built to hunt for those shadows – a tiny dip in starlight as an “exoplanet,” a planet beyond our solar system, crosses the face of its parent star. Finding exoplanet shadows is called the “transit” method.
The Searchers: How Will NASA Look for Signs of Life Beyond Earth?
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 th...
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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)
The first planet to have its clouds mapped showed us what weather looked like on a planet outside our solar system.
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Infographic: Planet Kepler-7b, cloud mapped
Infographic: Profile of planet Kepler-7b
This artist's concept depicts a planetary system discovered by Aleksander Wolszczan in 1992 around a pulsar.
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Extreme Planets
Extreme Planets
Este planeta lejano puede parecer un refugio amigable… ¡pero no te dejes engañar! ¡El clima en este mundo es mortal! ¡El color azul cobalto del planeta proviene de una atmósfera brumosa e incendiar...
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A poster done in the style of a vintage poster for a horror movie. Reading "Rains of Terror" It's death by a million cuts on this slasher planet. Jagged edges of glass can be seen battering a spacecraft on this alien world.
Lluvia de Terror
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...
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Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision - illustration only
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision - illustration only
This is a temperature map of the "hot Jupiter" class exoplanet WASP 43b. The white-colored region on the daytime side is 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The nighttime side temperatures drop to under 1,00...
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NASA Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Extreme Exoplanet
NASA Hubble Maps the Temperature and Water Vapor on an Extreme Exoplanet
Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called micr...
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Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing

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.
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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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