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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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This artist's conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are dim star-like bodies that lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel as stars do.
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Cold and Close Celestial Orb (Artist's Concept)
Cold and Close Celestial Orb (Artist's 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 concept illustrates what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical alien planet in a star system with an asteroid belt 25 times as massive as the one in our own solar system (alien system above, ours below).
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Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own
Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own
A night test of a small-scale starshade model shows how the starshade could block bright light from telescopes.
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A demonstration of the starshade blocking starlight.
Starshade desert testing
This graph of data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows how astronomers located a hot spot on a distant gas planet named upsilon Andromedae b -- and learned that it was in the wrong place.
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How to Find a Planetary Hot Spot
How to Find a Planetary Hot Spot
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
This illustration shows three possible scenarios for the evolution of asteroid belts.
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Scenarios for the Evolution of Asteroid Belts
Scenarios for the Evolution of Asteroid Belts
Relative sizes of Kepler habitable zone planets discovered as of 2013 April 18. Except for Earth, these are artists' renditions.
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Lining Kepler Habitable Zone Planets Up
Lining Kepler Habitable Zone Planets Up
Scientists using data from NASA's Kepler mission have confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.
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Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin -- Artistic Concept
Earth's Bigger, Older Cousin -- Artistic Concept
This artist's concept shows the closest known planetary system to our own-Epsilon Eridani. Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the system hosts two asteroid belts, in addition to previously identified candidate planets and an outer comet ring.
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Double the Rubble
Double the Rubble
A dusty planetary system (left) is compared to another system with little dust in this artist concept. Dust can make it difficult for telescopes to image planets because light from the dust can outshine that of the planets.
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Seeking Planets in the Dust (Artist's Concept)
Seeking Planets in the Dust (Artist's Concept)
Celebrate Valetine's Day with a hot Jupiter that tightly hugs its star.
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A Valentine for a Hot Jupiter
Hot Jupiter Valentine
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 bizzarre
If astronomers could somehow pull planets out of the sky and analyze them in the laboratory, it might look something like this artistically altered image illustrating new research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
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An Astronomer's Fantasy: Planets in the Lab
An Astronomer's Fantasy: Planets in the Lab
"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
NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
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Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
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
Keep your Valentine close with a tidally-locked planet, that always faces its star.
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Illustration of a tidally-locked planet.
Tidally-locked Valentine
Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b. The rings are shown eclipsing the young sun-like star J1407, as they would have appeared in early 2007.
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J1407b: Super-Saturn
J1407b: Super-Saturn
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
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The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) will soon get its first "taste" of exoplanets, helping astronomers decipher their chemical composition.
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Exoplanets Soon to Gleam in the Eye of NESSI
Exoplanets Soon to Gleam in the Eye of NESSI
A possible newfound planet spins through a clearing in a nearby star's dusty, planet-forming disc.
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Out of the Dust, A Planet is Born
Out of the Dust, A Planet is Born
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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Increasing the Odds of the Sweep
Increasing the Odds of the Sweep
Do other planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, also host life forms?
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In the Zone: How Scientists Search for Habitable Planets
In the Zone: How Scientists Search for Habitable Planets
How do coronagraphs find exoplanets? Find out in this animation narrated by Dr. Nick Siegler, Technology Manager of the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program.
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The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets
The Search for Alien Earths - How Coronagraphs Find Hidden Planets

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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