Skip Navigation

Multimedia

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

ENLARGE

Related

This artist’s impression shows the remarkable planetary system around the Sun-like star HD 10180.
More
The Planetary System Around the Sun-like Star HD 10180
The Planetary System Around the Sun-like Star HD 10180
This artist's concept shows what the weather might look like on cool star-like bodies known as brown dwarfs. These giant balls of gas start life like stars, but lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion at their cores, and instead, fade and cool with time.
More
Storms on Brown Dwarfs
Storms on Brown Dwarfs
An artist’s impression showing a newly discovered Jupiter twin gas giant orbiting the solar twin star, HIP 11915. The planet is of a very similar mass to Jupiter and orbits at the same distance from its star as Jupiter does from the Sun.
More
Artist’s Impression of a Jupiter twin orbiting HIP 11915
Artist’s Impression of a Jupiter twin orbiting HIP 11915
Artist's representation of the "habitable zone," the range of orbits where liquid water is permitted on the surface of a planet.
More
Odds are on Oodles of Earths
Odds are on Oodles of Earths
If the rings of Saturn impress you, prepare to marvel at J1407 b.
More
If You Like It, Then You Should've Put Rings On It
If You Like It, Then You Should've Put Rings On It
Tell someone they're unique, with our Earth valentine.
More
Illustration of the Earth
Earth Valentine
The Gliese 581 planetary system now has four known planets
More
Gliese 581
Gliese 581
This year we celebrate the discovery of 51 Pegasi b in October, 1995. This giant planet is about half the size of Jupiter and orbits its star in about 4 days. '51 Peg’ helped launch a whole new field of exploration.
More
The discovery that changed the way we see our universe: 51 Pegasi b
The discovery that changed the way we see our universe: 51 Pegasi b
This artist's concept depicts an itsy bitsy planetary system -- so compact, in fact, that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets.
More
Kepler's Mini Planetary System
Kepler's Mini Planetary System
Close-up of the planet Fomalhaut b as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Fomalhaut b was discovered in Hubble data in 2008.
More
HST ACS/HRC Wide View of Fomalhaut b Planet in 2004 and 2006
HST ACS/HRC Wide View of Fomalhaut b Planet in 2004 and 2006
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 star, as shown in this artist's conception.
More
Kepler-444 Planetary System (Artist's Concept)
Kepler-444 Planetary System (Artist's Concept)
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is an alien world just two-thirds the size of Earth one of the smallest on record.
More
Exoplanet is Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close (Artist's Concept)
Exoplanet is Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close (Artist's Concept)
This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone - the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist.
More
Kepler-22b: Closer to Finding Another Earth
Kepler-22b: Closer to Finding Another Earth
This artist's conception shows the 30 Ari system, which includes four stars and a planet.
More
Planet With Four Stars (Artist's Concept)
Planet With Four Stars (Artist's Concept)
This infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells astronomers that a distant gas planet, a so-called "hot Jupiter" called HD 189733b, might be smothered with high clouds. It is one of the first spectra of an alien world.
More
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: An Exoplanet Atmosphere
Cracking the Code of Faraway Worlds: An Exoplanet Atmosphere
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
These computer-generated images chart the development of severe weather patterns on the highly eccentric exoplanet HD 80606b during the days after its closest approach to its parent star.
More
Severe Exoplanetary Storm
Severe Exoplanetary Storm
The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69, a two-planet system about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The two planets of Kepler-69 orbit a star that belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type.
More
Kepler-69 and the Solar System
Kepler-69 and the Solar System
This artist's conception illustrates the brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026.
More
Forecast for Exotic Weather
Forecast for Exotic Weather
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. Planet formation theorists are challenged to explain how such a massive world could have formed.
More
Kepler-10 System
Kepler-10 System
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a visible light view of the outer dust around the young star HD100546. The position of the newly discovered protoplanet is marked with an orange spot.
More
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view of the dust disc around the young star HD 100546
NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope view of the dust disc around the young star HD 100546
This illustration shows one of the three newly discovered planets in the star cluster Messier 67.
More
Messier 67: Star Cluster
Messier 67: Star Cluster
This map, the first-ever of the surface of an exoplanet, shows temperature variations across the cloudy tops of a gas giant called HD 189733b.
More
First Map of an Exoplanet Atmosphere
First Map of an Exoplanet Atmosphere
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.
More
Two Zooms in the Kepler Field
Two Zooms in the Kepler Field
Kepler-11 is a sun-like star around which six planets orbit. At times, two or more planets pass in front of the star at once, as shown in this artist's conception of a simultaneous transit of three planets observed by NASA's Kepler spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2010.
More
Extraordinary New Planetary System
Extraordinary New Planetary System

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