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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).

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NASA/Kepler mission

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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.
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Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
Super-Venus (Artist Concept)
This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light and was obtained over a period of 1.25 hours on June 14 and 15, 2012.
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Planetary Family Portrait
Planetary Family Portrait
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 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.
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Exoplanet Forecast: Hot and Wet
Exoplanet Forecast: Hot and Wet
This image from NASA's Kepler mission shows the telescope's full field of view -- an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra.
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Full Focal Plane Image (First Light for Kepler Photometer) with labels
Full Focal Plane Image (First Light for Kepler Photometer) with labels
A graphic of present and future exoplanet missions from space agencies and observatories around the world.
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A picture of future missions.
Exoplanet missions
What does an extremely young planetary system look like? The answer depends on your point of view. This diagram shows how such a system appears when viewed from different directions.
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Observing Young Stars: Hitting the 'Sweet Spot'
Observing Young Stars: Hitting the 'Sweet Spot'
This is an artist's concept of a hypothetical 10-million-year-old star system. The bright blur at the center is a star much like our sun. The other orb in the image is a gas-giant planet like Jupiter. Wisps of white throughout the image represent traces of gas.
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Gas Giants Form Quickly
Gas Giants Form Quickly
This artist's concept shows how astronomers use the unique orbit of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and a depth-perceiving trick called parallax to determine the distance of dark planets, black holes, and failed stars which lurk invisibly among us.
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Depth Perception in Space
Depth Perception in Space
This chart shows most of the stars visible with the unaided eye on a clear night. The star Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern sky (marked with a red circle). It lies just 4.3 light-years from the Earth and one component in a triple star system.
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Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)
Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)
The timeline series includes a compilation of artist's concepts depicting milestones from the Kepler mission-NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around sun-like stars.
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Kepler Timeline
Kepler Timeline
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system.
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Kepler-20f
Kepler-20f
GJ1214b, shown in this artist's view, is a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth.
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Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
Artist's View of Extrasolar Planet GJ1214b
This artist's conception shows Kepler-36c as it might look from the surface of neighboring Kepler-36b.
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A Planetary Odd Couple
A Planetary Odd Couple
Kepler-10b must be a scorched world, orbiting at a distance that's more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own Sun, with a daytime temperature expected to be more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Imagined View from Planet Kepler 10-B
Imagined View from Planet Kepler 10-B
"Einstein's planet," formally known as Kepler-76b, is a "hot Jupiter" that orbits its star every 1.5 days. This artist's conception shows Kepler-76b orbiting its host star, which has been tidally distorted into a slight football shape (exaggerated here for effect).
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"Einstein's Planet," Kepler-76b
"Einstein's Planet," Kepler-76b
Artistic rendering of a planet's transmission spectrum
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A Planet's Transmission Spectrum
A Planet's Transmission Spectrum
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 where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet.
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Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns
Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns
This artist's concept shows a Jupiter-like planet, called Upsilon Andromedae b, soaking up the scorching rays of its nearby star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope determined that this planet is two-faced, with one side perpetually in the cold dark, and the other forever blistering under the heat of its star.
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Exotic World Blisters Under the Sun
Exotic World Blisters Under the Sun
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 Lyra.
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Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)
Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)
Some giant planets, many times the size of Jupiter, are puffed up.
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Less Mass, More Gas
Less Mass, More Gas
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.
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Brown Dwarf Aurora
Brown Dwarf Aurora
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 the first spectra of an alien world.
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Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: an Exoplanet Atmosphere
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: an Exoplanet Atmosphere
Observed transit depths and theoretical models for GJ 1214 b
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Observed transit for GJ 1214 b
Observed transit for GJ 1214 b
A whole new category of planets, Super Earths are quite common in our galaxy.
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Super Earth—Super Girth
Super Earth—Super Girth

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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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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