Skip Navigation
menu close modal

Multimedia

Kepler Photometer Being Lowered onto Spacecraft

Kepler Photometer Being Lowered onto Spacecraft

The Kepler photometer is lowered onto the spacecraft in a clean room.

Complete set of photographs of the Kepler construction is at the Ball Aerospace Kepler Photo Gallery.

Credit

Ball Aerospace

ENLARGE

Related

Artist's rendering of two Saturn-sized planets orbiting a Sun-like star called EPIC 249731291.
More
Artist's rendering of two Saturn-sized planets orbiting a Sun-like star called EPIC 249731291.
Two Hot Saturns
This false-color near-infrared image has been processed to remove most of the scattered light from the star Kappa Andromedae to reveal its "super-Jupiter" companion, Kappa Andromedae b.
More
Image of the "super-Jupiter" Kappa Andromedae b
Image of the "super-Jupiter" Kappa Andromedae b
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.
More
A Tiny Planet (Artist's Concept)
A Tiny Planet (Artist's Concept)
Kepler focal plane assembly in a clean room.
More
Kepler focal plane assembly
Kepler focal plane assembly
This artist's concept illustrates how planetary systems arise out of massive collisions between rocky bodies.
More
The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems
The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems
A hypothetical planet is depicted here moving through the habitable zone and then further out into a long, cold winter.
More
Eccentric Habitable Zones
Eccentric Habitable Zones
This figure charts 30 hours of observations taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of a strongly irradiated exoplanet (an planet orbiting a star beyond our own). It shows the very rapid heating th...
More
Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Exoplanet HD 80606b Infrared Light Curve
Over its ten years in space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier tool for studying exoplanets.
More
Spitzer: 10 years of surprises
Spitzer: 10 years of surprises
The orbit of a planet can cause a star to wobble around in space in relation to nearby stars in the sky.
More
Astrometry videos
Astrometry
The artistic impression shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2.
More
Reborn Kepler Can Still Find Planets
Reborn Kepler Can Still Find Planets
GJ1214b, shown in this artist's view, is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth.
More
Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
An artist's concept of brilliant auroras on the brown dwarf LSR J1835+3259, a misfit failed star about 18.5 light-years from Earth.
More
Brown Dwarf Aurora
Brown Dwarf Aurora
Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Located beyond the "snow line" this planet may give clues about planetary migration.
More
Transiting Exoplanet with Longest Known Year
Transiting Exoplanet with Longest Known Year
Twelve Exoplanet discoveries from Kepler that are less than twice the size of Earth and reside in the habitable zone of their host star. The sizes of the exoplanets are represented by the size of e...
More
Kepler's Greatest Hits
Kepler's Greatest Hits
This disintegrating planet is an endangered species.
More
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
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...
More
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision - illustration only
Exo-eclipse in x-ray vision - illustration only
This artist's concept depicts giant planets circling between belts of dust. Scientists think the star system HD 95086 may have a planetary architecture similar to this.
More
Hidden in a Dust Halo
Hidden in a Dust Halo
NASA scientists found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets. All five planets appear to be hazy.
More
A Whiff of Water
A Whiff of Water
A transmission spectrum made from a single observation from the Webb Space Telescope reveals atmospheric characteristics of the hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. 
More
Graphic showing atmospheric components of distant gas giant planet.
Exoplanet WASP-96 b Atmospheric Characteristics
From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged.
More
Residential Candidates
Residential Candidates
The telescope studied comets and asteroids, counted stars, scrutinized planets and galaxies, and discovered soccer-ball-shaped carbon spheres in space called buckyballs.
More
Spitzer Space Telescope
Spitzer Space Telescope
The artist's concept depicts Kepler-69c, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
More
Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
Observed transit depths and theoretical models for GJ 1214 b
More
Observed transit for GJ 1214 b
Observed transit for GJ 1214 b
This plot of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells astronomers that a toasty gas exoplanet, or a planet beyond our solar system, contains water vapor.
More
Exoplanet Forecast: Hot and Wet
Exoplanet Forecast: Hot and Wet
This artist's concept shows "The Behemoth," an enormous comet-like cloud of hydrogen bleeding off of a warm, Neptune-sized planet just 30 light-years from Earth. Also depicted is the parent star (a...
More
"Behemoth" Bleeding Atmosphere Around a Warm Exoplanet
"Behemoth" Bleeding Atmosphere Around a Warm Exoplanet

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.
More

Strange New Worlds

Explore an interactive gallery of some of the most intriguing and exotic planets discovered so far.
More
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.
More