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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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A new NASA-sponsored website, DiskDetective.org, lets the public discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
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Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats
Three astronomers in NASA Goddard's Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory discuss how Hubble's coronagraph and resulting images have helped scientists find planets orbiting distant stars.
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20 Years of Hubble Science
20 Years of Hubble Science
This plot of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicates the presence of molecules in the planet WASP-12b -- a super-hot gas giant that orbits tightly around its star.
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Signature of a Carbon-Rich Planet
Signature of a Carbon-Rich Planet
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
Using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the size of a world outside our solar system, as illustrated in this artist's c...
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Gauging an Alien World's Size (Artist Concept)
Gauging an Alien World's Size (Artist Concept)
This artist's concept shows a hypothetical "rejuvenated" planet -- a gas giant that has reclaimed its youthful infrared glow.
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Hypothetical 'Rejuvenated' Planets (Artist's Concept)
Hypothetical 'Rejuvenated' Planets (Artist's Concept)
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...
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Kepler-10 System
Kepler-10 System
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 is an artist's impression of the view from the vicinity of a hypothetical terrestrial planet and moon orbiting the red dwarf star AU Microscopii.
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The View from Within AU Microscopii's Disk
The View from Within AU Microscopii's Disk
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 illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. The planet's 66-day orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the b...
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Wobbly Planet Orbital Schematic (Illustration)
Wobbly Planet Orbital Schematic (Illustration)
From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged.
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Residential Candidates
Residential Candidates
This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-47, a double-star system containing two planets, one orbiting in the so-called "habitable zone." This is the sweet spot in a planetary system wh...
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Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns
Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns
Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307 g straddles the line between "Super-Earth" and "mini-Neptune" and scientists aren't sure if it has a rocky surface or one that's buried beneath thick l...
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HD 40307 g
Experience the Gravity of a Super Earth
The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62e, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation L...
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Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)
Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)
The Gliese 581 planetary system now has four known planets
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Gliese 581
Gliese 581
A new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has shown that a planet is making the star that it orbits act much older than it actually is, as explained in our latest press release. ...
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WASP-18b: A 'Hot Jupiter'
WASP-18b: A 'Hot Jupiter'
A detailed explanation into the workings of the coronagraph and how it can help directly image exoplanets.
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How will coronagraphs be used to directly image exoplanets and search for life.
The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets
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
This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the planet Fomalhaut b, orbiting its parent star, Fomalhaut.
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HST Image of Fomalhaut and Fomalhaut b
HST Image of Fomalhaut and Fomalhaut b
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found that the hottest part of a distant planet, named upsilon Andromedae b, is not under the glare of its host star as might be expected.
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Planetary Hot Spot Not Under the Glare of Star
Planetary Hot Spot Not Under the Glare of Star
This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026.
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Forecast for Exotic Weather
Forecast for Exotic Weather
This wide-field view of the sky around the bright star Alpha Centauri was created from photographic images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
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The bright star Alpha Centauri and its surroundings
The bright star Alpha Centauri and its surroundings
This artist's conception shows the silhouette of a rocky planet, dubbed HD 219134b, as it passes in front of its star.
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Little Black Spot on the Star Today (Artist's Concept)
Little Black Spot on the Star Today (Artist's Concept)
There are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog - an increase of 521 since the release of the previous catalog in Jan. 2015.
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Kepler Planet Candidates, July 2015
Kepler Planet Candidates, July 2015

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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