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Extrasolar Planets

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Extrasolar Planets

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Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting): By The Numbers. (Image credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel) The graphic tells NASA's Kepler spacecraft's story by the numbers from the moment it began hunting for planets outside our solar system on May 12, 2009. From the trove of data collected, we have learned that planets are common, that most sun-like stars have at least one planet and that nature makes planets with unimaginable diversity.

Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting)

NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star. This artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f. (Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute /JPL-Caltech)

January 2015. New worlds in the habitable zone from Kepler. An artist's conception of one of the newly released exo-worlds, a planet orbiting an ancient planetary nebula. (Credit: David A. Aguilar/CfA)


Relax on Kepler-16b - Where your shadow always has company

"Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between "Super-Earth" and 'mini-Neptune'. At eight time the Earth's mass, its gravitational pull is much, much stronger." (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) I can't see what the attraction would be of weighing 8 times as much, wouldn't be able to move! And is that someone skydiving? Bad idea.

Experience the Gravity of a Super Earth

Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially 'habitable zone' around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life exists on such a planet its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star's red-wavelength photons, giving a color palette very different to the Earthly greens. The discovery was made by Kepler, NASA's planet hunting telescope. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Where the Grass is Always Redder on the Other Side

The Kepler space telescope has been back in use since 2014. After an ingenious fix, it's now planet-hunting again, reborn as K2. The proposed target regions for the Kepler K2 mission. (Credit: NASA/Kepler)

January 2015. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has, to date, offered scientists more than 4,000 candidate planets -- the 1,000th of which was recently verified. Eight are less than twice Earth-size and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars cooler and smaller than our sun. The search continues for Earth-size habitable zone worlds around sun-like stars. (Credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel)

February 2, 2011, NASA released Kepler data. This shows Keplers 1200 Planet candidates by size and location on the Photometer array of 42 CCD elements. As the number of Pale Blue Dots increase, so do the chances for finding life on a Second Earth. (Credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel)

Kepler Discovers First Earth Sized Planets inside Habitable Zone

Visualization of the habitable zone. The red region is too warm, the blue region too cool, and the green region is just right for liquid water. Because it can be described in this way, sometimes it is referred to as the "Goldilocks Zone," too. (Credit: NASA Kepler Mission)

Habitable zone relative to size of star, comparing the Sun with Gliese 581. You can see that the habitable zone of lower mass stars is closer to the star than the Sun's habitable zone is. Seeing Mars is in the habitable zone also shows that there are factors other than distance involved in habitability. (Credit: ESO)

HD 40307 system in the constellation Pictor. A Trio of Super-Earths (artist's impression). Credit: ESO

HD 40307 d - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Artistic impression of planet Kapteyn b, a potentially habitable planet, with Omega Centauri in the background. (Image: Abel Mendez, Planetary Habitability Laboratory, 2014-07-08)

Potentially habitable planets. (Image: Planetary Habitability Laboratory, 2014-07-08)

Nearby Super-Earth, Gliese 832 c, is the most Earth-like Exoplanet

Solar System compared to Kepler-47, a double-star system containing two planets, one orbiting in the habitable zone - where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. One star is similar to the sun in size, but not as bright. The second one is tiny and less than 1% as bright as the Sun. This means the system's habitable zone is closer in. One year on Kepler-47c is 303 days, but it's not a world hospitable for life. It seems to be similar to Neptune. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)

NASA - Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns

Exoplanet GJ 504b (artist's depiction). In the constellation Virgo, the planet glows a dark magenta. It's about four times the mass of Jupiter and when discovered in August 2013, was the lowest-mass planet ever directly imaged around a star like the sun. (Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger) Mona Evans, "Virgo the Maiden" www.bellaonline.c...

Astronomers Image Lowest-mass Exoplanet Around a Sun-like Star

Kepler-186f (artist's concept). The planet resides in the Kepler-186 system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system includes four inner planets, seen lined up in orbit around a host star that is half the size and mass of the sun. (Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech) Mona Evans, "Searching for Extrasolar Planets" www.bellaonline.c...

▶ Kepler's New Universe. "Kepler has opened up a new universe. Only about 20 years ago, we didn't know if there were any other planets around any other stars besides our own, now we know we live in a galaxy that contains more planets than stars. Every star in our galaxy has on average 1.6 planets in orbit around it." This video explains how the Kepler mission works.

Kepler mission discovered 715 new planets. 2014-02-26. The artist concept depicts multiple-transiting planet systems, which are stars with more than one planet. The planets eclipse or transit their host star from the vantage point of the observer. This angle is called edge-on. (Image Credit: NASA)

Dust disk around a new star. (Artist's impression) Astronomers think that planetary systems - including ours - form from such disks.

Open cluster Messier 67. Artist's impression of a star that's nearly a twin to the Sun, and its planet. From a study published in January 2014 based on six years worth of observational data at ESO's La Silla Observatory. (Credit: L Calcada / ESO)

BPM 37093 ("Lucy") is a star composed entirely of diamond. It's 4,000 km across and 10 billion trillion trillion carats. 50 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, it's classified as a crystallized white dwarf, the hot core that remains after a star burns out. Mona Evans, "Exotic Exoplanets Tour" www.bellaonline.c...

In 2011 the first "circumbinary planet" - a planet orbiting two stars- was discovered. While the planet's officially called Kepler 16b, astronomers are already referring to it as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, which also had two suns. Mona Evans, "Exotic Exoplanets Tour" www.bellaonline.c...

Tatooine, the fictional home of Luke Skywalker, is a planet with two suns. (Credit & copyright: Star Wars film productions) The binary star system appeared in the films while astronomers were still arguing about whether such a thing was possible. Since then planets have been discovered in binary systems.