IMAGES

Rocky Planets

April 18, 2013

Lining Kepler Habitable Zone Planets Up

Relative sizes of Kepler habitable zone planets discovered as of 2013 April 18. Except for Earth, these are artists' renditions.
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April 18, 2013

Kepler-62e (Artist Concept)

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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April 18, 2013

Super-Venus (Artist Concept)

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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April 18, 2013

Morning Star (Artist Concept)

This artist's concept depicts in the foreground planet Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of its star, which is seen peeking out from behind the right edge of the planet.
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April 18, 2013

Kepler-62 and the Solar System

The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62, a five-planet system about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.
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April 18, 2013

Kepler-69 and the Solar System

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.
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April 18, 2013

Kepler-62f, a Small Habitable Zone World (Artist Concept)

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-62f, 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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February 06, 2013

Red Dwarf Planet

The artist's conception shows a hypothetical planet with two moons orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star.
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August 28, 2012

Sharing the Light of Two Suns

This artist's concept illustrates Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system -- multiple planets orbiting two suns – 4,900 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus.
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August 28, 2012

Two Planets of Kepler-47

The two planets of Kepler-47, the first transiting circumbinary system -- a system with more than one planet orbiting a pair of stars. Kepler-47b, on the right, has three times the radius of earth and orbits the pair of stars in less than 50 days while Kepler-47c is thought to be a gaseous giant, slightly larger than Neptune with an orbital period of 303 days.
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August 28, 2012

Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns

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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July 18, 2012

Exoplanet is Extremely Hot and Incredibly Close (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.
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January 11, 2012

Kepler's Mini Planetary System

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.
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January 11, 2012

Smallest exoplanets compared to Earth and Mars

This chart compares the smallest known exoplanets, or planets orbiting outside the solar system, to our own planets Mars and Earth.
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December 20, 2011

Kepler-20e -- The Smallest Exoplanet (Artist's Concept)

This artist's animation flies through the Kepler-20 star system, where NASA's Kepler mission discovered the first Earth-size planets around a star beyond our own.
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September 26, 2011

Earth and Super-Earth

This artists concept contrasts our familiar Earth with the exceptionally strange planet known as 55 Cancri e.
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October 06, 2009

Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own

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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August 10, 2009

Planetary Demolition Derby

This artist's animation shows a celestial body about the size of our moon slamming at great speed into a body the size of Mercury.
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April 07, 2009

Chemical Soups Around Cool Stars

This artist's conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks.
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February 17, 2008

Rocky, Terrestrial Worlds

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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January 10, 2005

Massive Smash-Up at Vega

This artist concept illustrates how a massive collision of objects, perhaps as large as the planet Pluto, smashed together to create the dust ring around the nearby star Vega. New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate the collision took place within the last one million years.
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December 09, 2004

The View from Within AU Microscopii's Disk

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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October 18, 2004

The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems

This artist's concept illustrates how planetary systems arise out of massive collisions between rocky bodies.
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October 18, 2004

The Rocky World of Young Planetary Systems (Annotated)

This artist's concept illustrates how planetary systems arise out of massive collisions between rocky bodies.
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