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Q&Alien- What's in an exoplanet name?

Exoplanets can be pretty weird places, but do their names have to be so weird, too? Watch and learn how the scientific community determines and categorizes these unique planets.

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For students in Grade: 3rd to 12th  A set of slides designed to help teachers and Subject Matter Experts explain complex topics in a fun way.
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Collection of Interactive PowerPoint Slides to be Used in Public Engagement
Collection of Interactive PowerPoint Slides to be Used in Public Engagement
HD 80606b is a gas giant planet in an eccentric orbit around its star. Every 111 days, the planet passes within 2.8 million miles of the star's surface. Animated without dissolves.
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Spitzer Exoplanet Observation of HD 80606b
Spitzer Exoplanet Observation of HD 80606b
Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity. 
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Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.
Distant Planet May Be On Its Second Atmosphere, NASA's Hubble Finds
Cluster of Stars in Kepler's Sight - This image zooms into a small portion of Kepler's full field of view -- an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy.
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Star Cluster NGC 6791 from Kepler First Light Image
Star Cluster NGC 6791 from Kepler First Light Image
This diagram shows how astronomers observed a distant gas giant planet around OGLE-2005-BLG-169 using microlensing.
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Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
Identification of Exoplanet Host Star OGLE-2005-BLG-169
When we talk about the enormity of the cosmos, it’s easy to toss out big numbers – but far more difficult to wrap our minds around just how large, how far and how numerous celestial bodies really a...
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A video explaining a light-year, how big our galaxy is and how far away exoplanets, the planets beyond our solar system really are.
Our Milky Way Galaxy: How Big is Space?
This infographic explains how NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope can be used in tandem with a telescope on the ground to measure the distances to planets discovered using the "microlensing" technique.
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Infographic: Finding Planets With Microlensing
Infographic: Finding Planets With Microlensing
This artist's concept shows the searing-hot gas planet WASP-12b (orange orb) and its star.
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Hot, Carbon-Rich Planet
Hot, Carbon-Rich Planet
If life exists on some of the exoplanets that Kepler finds, it may exist in forms similar to what we see in some of Earth's most extreme conditions.
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Kepler: Diversity of life possible on other planets
Kepler: Diversity of life possible on other planets
Audience: 3rd grade and older  This slide shows how dramatically different the planets in our solar system are in size.
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This slide shows how dramatically different the planets in our solar system are in size
Comparison of Planet Sizes: Solar Systems
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), the most versatile spectrograph ever to fly on Hubble, ceased operations in August 2004 due to the failure of its power supply. The STIS instrument's ac...
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STIS Repair: The Quest for Renewed Exploration
STIS Repair: The Quest for Renewed Exploration
This video shows an artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9.
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Artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
Artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9
Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called micr...
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Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
Extrasolar Planet Detected by Gravitational Microlensing
Over its ten years in space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier tool for studying exoplanets.
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Spitzer: 10 years of surprises
Spitzer: 10 years of surprises
Every star has a habitable zone, but where that zone lies is different for stars of different sizes and brightness.
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There's a helpful concept we use for the distance from a star where you might find planets with liquid water on their surfaces – water being essential for life as we know it. It's called the habitable zone. Every star has one, but they're not all equal.
Video: What Is the Habitable Zone?
Learn more in-depth features of Eyes on Exoplanets!
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Eyes on Exoplanets Tutorial 2: Advanced Tutorial
Eyes on Exoplanets Tutorial 2: Advanced Tutorial
Animation of HAT-P-7 light curve showing both large transit dip and small occultation dip.
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HAT-P-7 Light Curve
HAT-P-7 Light Curve
An animation explaining how the hybrid Lyot coronagraph works. Watch the longer version here.
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An animation explaining how the hybrid Lyot coronagraph works.
Coronagraph explanation 2 minutes
Kepler-10b as a scorched world, orbiting at a distance that’s more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our own Sun.
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What Is Planet Kepler-10b Like?
What Is Planet Kepler-10b Like?
Our Sun is just one out of over 200 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Sun is located in the Orion arm of our galaxy about 25,000 light years from the center of the Galaxy. Kepler will...
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Kepler's View of the Galaxy
Kepler's View of the Galaxy
NASA's Kepler mission revealed that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy. It opened our eyes to diverse worlds – some entirely unlike planets found in our solar system.
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Video detailing the science highlights of NASA's Kepler space telescope.
Kepler's Science Results
These slides compare the density and illumination of planets in our Solar System with those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
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A comparison of the density and illumination of planets in our Solar System with those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
TRAPPIST-1 & Solar System Comparison
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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Sharing the Light of Two Suns
Sharing the Light of Two Suns
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 hole...
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Depth Perception in Space
Depth Perception in Space
Kepler does not orbit the Earth, rather it orbits the Sun in concert with the Earth, slowly drifting away from Earth. Every 61 Earth years, Kepler and Earth will pass by each other.
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Kepler's Orbit
Kepler's Orbit

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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