Giant Exoplanet and Debris Disk

This artist's rendering shows a large exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust.

55 Cancri e

Hot-Lava World Illustration

This illustration shows one possible scenario for the hot, rocky exoplanet called 55 Cancri e, which is nearly two times as wide as Earth. New data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the planet has extreme temperature swings from one side to the other and a possible reason for this...

Gauging an Alien World's Size

Using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the size of a world outside our solar system, as illustrated in this artist's conception The diameter of the exoplanet, dubbed Kepler-93b, is now known with an uncertainty of just...

55 Cancri e with Atmosphere

The super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e, depicted with its star in this artist's concept, likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth's, with ingredients that could be similar to those of Earth's atmosphere.

Warm Neptune HAT-P-26b

The atmosphere of the distant "warm Neptune" HAT-P-26b, illustrated here, is unexpectedly primitive, composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.

Dark World

This artist's illustration depicts the exoplanet LHS 3844b, which is 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits an M dwarf star. The planet's surface may be covered mostly in dark lava rock, with no apparent atmosphere, according to observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.