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Kepler Full Focal Plane Image - Inverted

Kepler Full Focal Plane Image - Inverted

Inverted image (dark stars on light sky) Stars in the image are all brighter than magnitude 18.5. Stars brighter than 11.5 are "saturated" (all look the same brightness in the image).

Credit

NASA/Kepler mission

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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 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
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
Today Kepler-452b is receiving 10 percent more energy from its parent star than the Earth is from the Sun. If Kepler-452b had the same mass as Earth it would be on the verge of experiencing the run...
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A Window Into Time
A Window Into Time
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 diversity of exoplanets is large — more than 800 planets outside the Solar System have been found to date, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed.
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An Exoplanet Seen From Its Moon
An Exoplanet Seen From Its Moon
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
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 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 artist’s impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet in the ring of dust around the young star HD 100546.
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Artist's impression of a gas giant planet forming in the disc around the young star HD 100546
Artist's impression of a gas giant planet forming in the disc around the young star HD 100546
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
Rocky, Terrestrial Worlds
The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five small planets in very compact orbits. The planets were detected from the dimming that occurs when they transit the disk of their parent ...
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Kepler-444 Planetary System (Artist's Concept)
Kepler-444 Planetary System (Artist's Concept)
This artist’s impression shows how the newly discovered super-Earth surrounding the nearby star GJ1214 may look.
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GJ1214b
GJ1214b
This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 209458b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of th...
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Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: an Exoplanet Atmosphere
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: an Exoplanet Atmosphere
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
Celebrate your rocking single status with a rogue planet, the world without a star.
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Illustration of a rogue planet.
Rogue planet Valentine
Some giant planets, many times the size of Jupiter, are puffed up.
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Less Mass, More Gas
Less Mass, More Gas
Young stars start out with a massive disk of gas and dust that over time, astronomers think, either diffuses away or coalesces into planets and asteroids.
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Grazing in the gap
Grazing in the gap
Astronomers once thought our eight-planet solar system was pretty ho-hum; but it turns out that we could be the oddballs.
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Maybe We're the Weird Ones
Maybe We're the Weird Ones
This shows the first planet to be confirmed as an exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, and the newest Earth-sized planet confirmed.
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Twenty Years of Progress
Twenty Years of Progress
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 is an artist's concept of HD 189733b and its parent star.
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Extrasolar Planet's Hazy Atmosphere (Artist's Concept)
Extrasolar Planet's Hazy Atmosphere (Artist's Concept)
This plot shows the masses and sizes of the smallest exoplanets for which both quantities have been measured. The solar system planets (shown in red) are for comparison.
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Mars-size Kepler-138b Gets a Mass
Mars-size Kepler-138b Gets a Mass
This artist's concept illustrates two planetary systems -- 55 Cancri (top) and our own. Blue lines show the orbits of planets, including the dwarf planet Pluto in our solar system.
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Our Solar System's Cousin?
Our Solar System's Cousin?
This artist's concept shows a brown dwarf surrounded by a swirling disk of planet-building dust.
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Solar System in the Making
Solar System in the Making

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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