This artists illustration shows the planetary system K2-138. Five planets were initially detected in the system but in 2018 scientists found evidence of a sixth planet.
Kepler Beyond Planets: Finding Exploding Stars (Type Ia Supernova from a White Dwarf Merger)
This image from an animation shows the merger of two white dwarfs. A white dwarf is an extremely dense remnant of a star that can no longer burn nuclear fuel at its core.
Kepler Beyond Planets: Finding Exploding Stars (Type Ia Supernova from a White Dwarf Stealing Matter)
This image from an animation shows the explosion of a white dwarf, an extremely dense remnant of a star that can no longer burn nuclear fuel at its core.
This image from an animation shows a kind of stellar explosion called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient. In this case, a giant star 'burp' out a shell of gas and dust about a year before exploding.
This image from an animation shows a gigantic star exploding in a 'core collapse' supernova. As molecules fuse inside the star, eventually the star can't support its own weight anymore.
Kepler-90 System Compared to Our Solar System (Artist's Concept)
With the discovery of an eighth planet, NASA's Kepler-90 system is the first to tie with our solar system in number of planets. This is an artist's concept compared with our own solar system.
With the discovery of an eighth planet, NASA's Kepler-90 system is the first to tie with our solar system in number of planets. This is an artist's concept.
This artist's concept depicts 'heartbeat stars,' which have been detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Two heartbeat stars are seen swerving close to one another in their closest approach along their highly elongated orbits around one another.
This illustration based on computer modeling and data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, represents how hot Jupiters of different temperatures and different cloud compositions might appear while flying over the dayside of these planets on a spaceship.
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft observed the comet during the final month of the Rosetta mission, while the comet was not visible from Earth. This is a frame from an animation composed of images from Kepler of the comet.
Young Star and Its Infant Planet (Artist's animation)
When a planet such as K2-33b passes in front of its host star, it blocks some of the star's light.shown in this frame from an animation as discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.
In a global experiment in exoplanet observation, the K2 mission and Earth-based observatories on six continents will survey millions of stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
Caught: A Supernova Shock Breakout (Artist Concept)
The brilliant flash of an exploding star's shockwave -- what astronomers call the 'shock breakout' -- is illustrated in artist's concept based on NASA's Kepler.
Cool Star Marked by Long-Lived Storm (Artist's Concept)
This illustration shows a cool star, called W1906+40, marked by a raging storm near one of its poles. The storm is thought to be similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Scientists discovered it using NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes.
Of the 1,030 confirmed planets from Kepler, a dozen are less than twice the size of Earth and reside in the habitable zone of their host stars. In this diagram, the sizes of the exoplanets are represented by the size of each sphere.
This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186 system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature solar system that would fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury.
