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NASA Exoplanets
@nasaexoplanets.extwitter.link
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There’s a rhythm to the stars. Astronomers identified a collection of pulsating red giant stars across the sky, each with a unique tone that depends on each star’s interior structure, mass, and size. #MondayMotivation
September 29, 2025 at 6:55 PM
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Smaug isn’t the only dragon in the sky. Draco is a circumpolar constellation that’s visible in the northern sky all year! Within this constellation's hoard is the Cat’s Eye Nebula, and the Spindle and Tadpole galaxies. https://go.nasa.gov/4pyMyTB https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G1efyU8XYAAWKxk.jpg
September 22, 2025 at 8:19 PM
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3, 2, 1 … blast off! 🔢

Help your little learners practice math and develop fine-motor skills with this clip counting activity. Count the space objects on each card and clip the correct number with a clothespin! https://go.nasa.gov/42Gw7uH https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G1OOQllW0Agh6os.png
September 19, 2025 at 4:23 PM
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Of 5,609 confirmed exoplanets, just 200 are thought to be terrestrial – rocky worlds like Earth and Mars. Fewer still are in their stars' habitable zones. That doesn't mean they're inhabited, of course, but we're looking! https://go.nasa.gov/3Ul23RP
An artist's concept depicts the imagined view from the surface of a terrestrial exoplanet. The surface is rocky with hills or mountains on the horizon. The shy is dusky with one large star low on the horizon, with two other stars in sky, higher and farther away. It is labeled Illustration and the credit is ESO.
April 15, 2024 at 7:32 PM
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In a cosmic ballroom 1,900 light-years away, six stars are dancing in pairs across space. All three pairs are entwined, and all six stars go through eclipses to our view. https://go.nasa.gov/3TZloX4
Eclipsing binary schematic headlined Structure of Sextuple System TYC 7037-89-1. This schematic shows the configuration. The inner quadruple is composed of two binaries, A and C, which orbit each other every four years or so. An outer binary, B, orbits the quadruple roughly every 2,000 years. All three pairs are eclipsing binaries. The orbits shown are not to scale. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
April 12, 2024 at 9:09 PM
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Pretty in purple 💜
Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud circles the Milky Way in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas slowly collapse to form new stars. https://go.nasa.gov/4cVt59F
The Large magellanic cloud shines in purple with black streaks in this image from @NASAHubble. The gas and dust is purple and new stars shine in white and blue.
April 10, 2024 at 8:40 PM
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Earth hasn't always been a pale blue dot. It's also been a lava-covered rock, a tropical riot of earth-shaking dinosaurs, and an Ice Age expanse where cave-dwelling humans hunted mammoths. If we're looking for another Earth, which one? https://go.nasa.gov/3PVaVLl
An infographic is headlined Earth through the ages and shows graphical illustrations of five different planet Earths. The first is pale orange dot, 3.3-3.8 billion years ago when the planet was shrouded in a murky haze. Second is Snowball Earth, when the planet was covered in ice, 630 million years ago. Next is the Dinosaur Era, 252 to 66 million years ago. The Last Ice Age was 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago and Present Day Earth, 11,700 years ago to now, the Halocene
April 9, 2024 at 11:19 PM
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Our Sun may not look a day over 4.5 billion years old, but it's hard to date stars much farther away. Our next-gen @NASARoman will be able to help determine the ages of hundreds of thousands of stars at the center of our galaxy! 🤩 https://go.nasa.gov/3PSeG40
Image of the Sun with sunspots on the yellow-orange disk. This image of our Sun was taken in August 2012 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It shows a number of sunspots. Other stars also experience starspots, which cause the star’s observed brightness to vary as the spots rotate in and out of view. By measuring those changes in brightness, astronomers can infer the star’s rotation period. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will collect brightness measurements for hundreds of thousands of stars located in the direction of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, yielding information about their rotation rates. Credit: NASA
April 9, 2024 at 6:08 PM
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We are made of star stuff and you can see it!
@NASAWebb took a closer look at a starburst galaxy, and its detailed image is flecked with green — areas of iron, most of them supernova remnants — iron like that in the blood running through your veins. https://go.nasa.gov/3TKd65x
Left: Messier 82 as imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hour-glass-shaped red plumes of gas are shooting outward from above and below a bright blue, disk-shaped center of a galaxy. This galaxy is surrounded by many white stars and set against the black background of space. A small square highlights the section that the image on the right shows in greater detail. White text at bottom reads Hubble. Right: A section of Messier 82 as imaged by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. An edge-on spiral starburst galaxy with a bright white, glowing core set against the black background of space. A white band of the edge-on disk extends from lower left to upper right. Dark brown tendrils of dust are scattered thinly along this band. Many white points in various sizes – stars or star clusters – are scattered throughout the image, but are most heavily concentrated toward the center. Many clumpy, red filaments extend vertically above and below the galaxy’s plane. White text at bottom reads Webb.
April 3, 2024 at 8:19 PM
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As we count down to the eclipse on April 8, it makes us think about similar eclipses among the stars.
How often we see them depends on our point of view. Literally. And they offer a wonderland of science! https://go.nasa.gov/3THI0eO
Artist's concept shows the red-dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1, at the upper left, with two large dots on the face of the disk representing transiting planets; five more planets are shown at varying positions descending toward the lower right as they orbit the star. Artist's concept shows the TRAPPIST-1 planets as they might be seen from Earth using an extremely powerful – and fictional – telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
April 2, 2024 at 11:07 PM
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Big, blue and super-hot 💙
Winds from giant stars drive galaxy evolution and seed galaxies with the elements needed for life. Those elements are cooked up in stars and then injected into space as a star dies. https://go.nasa.gov/3Q5tBrV
This @NASAHubble image shows a roughly circular, wreath-like area of red, orange, beige, brown, and green clouds with many wisps and filaments. In the center of this wreath-like structure is a dark cavity filled with hundreds of sparkling, blue stars. The stars are not evenly distributed, with more on the right half of the image. Some blue stars also appear on top of the surrounding, wispy clouds. The Hubble Space Telescope image of a star-forming region containing massive, young, blue stars in 30 Doradus, the Tarantula Nebula. Located within the Large Magellanic Cloud.
March 29, 2024 at 9:43 PM
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The closest exoplanet to Earth is just 4 light-years away. But traveling as fast as @NASAVoyager, it would still take us 75,000 years to reach it. Exoplanets are far, yet we've discovered almost 5,600 of them! https://go.nasa.gov/3vooMCT
An illustration shows the imagined surface of Proxima Centauri b, a super-earth exoplanet. There is a star setting in the sky, with another star smaller and farther away. The surface is rocky nd the sky is dark, except for the orange glow of the sun.
March 29, 2024 at 4:39 PM
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There is evidence that two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star are "water worlds." These worlds, in a planetary system 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, are unlike any planet found in our solar system. https://go.nasa.gov/3x6nDQC
Left: a cross section of Earth showing its interior. Right: a cross section of the blue world, Kepler-138 d with a brown core (rocks & metal) below a dark blue high-pressure water layer that is below a light blue water vapor envelope. This is an artist's illustration showing a cross-section of the Earth (left) and the exoplanet Kepler-138 d (right). Like the Earth, this exoplanet has an interior composed of metals and rocks (brown portion), but Kepler-138 d also has a thick layer of high-pressure water in various forms: supercritical and potentially liquid water deep inside the planet and an extended water vapor envelope (shades of blue) above it. These water layers make up more than 50% of its volume, or a depth of about 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers). The Earth, in comparison, has a negligible fraction of liquid water with an average ocean depth of less than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers). Benoit Gougeon (University of Montreal)
March 26, 2024 at 9:35 PM
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Jets blast across space, slicing through the gas and dust of a nebula in this new @NASAHubble image. The bright object to the far right (hidden by a dark lane of dust) is a forming star, FS Tau B, surrounded by material that can eventually form planets: https://go.nasa.gov/3PwaarB
A bright point of light shines near center-right with diffraction spikes, surrounded by glowing clouds against black space. A blue jet of material extends roughly throughout the center of the image, partially obscured by the clouds.
March 25, 2024 at 9:19 PM
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Good Dog (Stars)!🐶
Sirius A, the brightest star in our night sky, revolves with its faint, tiny stellar companion Sirius B. Both are in the Canis Major (Big Dog) constellation. Sirius B may look tiny, but it's also massive, the remains of an exploded star. #NationalPuppyDay
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows Sirius A, the brightest star in our nighttime sky, along with its faint, tiny stellar companion, Sirius B. Astronomers overexposed the image of Sirius A [at center] so that the dim Sirius B [tiny dot at lower left] could be seen. The cross-shaped diffraction spikes and concentric rings around Sirius A, and the small ring around Sirius B, are artifacts produced within the telescope's imaging system. The two stars revolve around each other every 50 years. Sirius A, only 8.6 light-years from Earth, is the fifth closest star system known. Sirius B, a white dwarf, is very faint because of its tiny size, only 7,500 miles in diameter. White dwarfs are the leftover remnants of stars similar to the sun.
March 23, 2024 at 9:20 PM
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A cauldron of planetary potential🤩
Two developing stars are swirled by ices containing complex organic molecules – exactly the sort of ingredients needed to form habitable exoplanets! https://go.nasa.gov/3VhOxPM
An image of a region of a molecular cloud. The orange cloud is dense and bright close to the top of the image, like rolling clouds, and grows darker and more wispy toward the bottom and in the top corner. One bright star with six short diffraction spikes and several dimmer stars are visible as light spots among the clouds. This image at a wavelength of 15 microns was taken by MIRI (the Mid-Infrared Instrument) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, of a region near the protostar known as IRAS 23385. IRAS 23385 and IRAS 2A (not visible in this image) were targets for a recent research effort by astronomers that used Webb to discover that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed. NASA, ESA, CSA, W. Rocha (Leiden University)
March 22, 2024 at 7:23 PM
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A black hole just minding its own business 🕶️
@chandraxray sees a supermassive black hole having much less of an impact on its surroundings than expected. https://go.nasa.gov/4a1RMzn
This composite image shows a quasar, a rare and extreme class of supermassive black hole, that’s located about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth. At the center of the image is a bright, white, circular light, similar to the beam of a flashlight if it was pointed directly toward you. A fuzzy, bar-shaped structure of red-colored radio light, slightly larger than the width of the white light, surrounds the circular structure. The red bar also extends above and below the white light, stretching in a somewhat straight line from about the one o’clock position to the seven o’clock position on a clock face. On either side of the red bar, X-ray light is present as blue, wispy clouds of hot gas that are brighter closer to the red and white features. The brighter clouds represent more dense gas.
March 21, 2024 at 9:44 PM
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Pity the brown dwarf?
Not a planet, not a star, but something in between. Not even brown. These red objects are often born with a binary companion, like many stars, but over time they drift apart due to the pull of passing stars. https://go.nasa.gov/3TJT10h
his is an artist's concept of a brown dwarf. This class of object is too large to be a planet (and did not form in the same way), but is too small to be a star because it cannot sustain nuclear fusion, since it is less massive than even the smallest stars. A brown dwarf is marked by wind-driven horizontal bands of thick clouds that may alternate with relatively cloud-free bands, giving the object a striped appearance. Whirling storm systems as big as terrestrial continents, or even small planets, might exist. The name "brown dwarf" is a misnomer because the object would typically appear red to the naked eye. It is brightest in infrared light. Many brown dwarfs have binary companions. But as they age, the binary system gravitationally falls apart, and each dwarf goes its separate way, according to a recent Hubble Space Telescope study. The background stars in this illustration are a science visualization assembled from the Gaia spacecraft star catalog. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
March 21, 2024 at 5:11 PM
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Happy Equinox!
Day and night are equal today, much like every day on a tidally locked exoplanet. Where the sides meet is called the terminator, and it's like twilight on Earth – neither day nor night, but something in between. https://go.nasa.gov/4cpPImq
Earth at Twilight. No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the gradual transition to darkness we experience on Earth as twilight. For a tidally locked planet there is no day or night, only freezing darkness on one side and burning constant sunlight on the other. The terminator zone is bathed in constant twilight and would likely be the only place on the planet to be potentially hospitable. Credit Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center
March 19, 2024 at 6:18 PM
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A galaxy ~52 million light-years from Earth is one of many forcing its way through the massive Virgo cluster of galaxies. The pressure exerted by this intergalactic gas, known as ram pressure, has dramatic effects on star formation in LEDA 42160. https://go.nasa.gov/43m4E0y
A distorted dwarf galaxy, obscured by dust and by bright outbursts caused by star formation, floats roughly in the center. Tendrils of gas stretch up from the plane of the galaxy. A few distant galaxies are visible in the background around it, many as little spirals, and also including a prominent elliptical galaxy. A bright star hangs above the galaxy in the foreground, marked by cross-shaped diffraction spikes.
March 18, 2024 at 11:42 PM
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Happy #StPatricksDay! 🍀
This glowing emerald nebula seen by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is thought to have been sculpted by powerful O stars, the most massive type of star known. RCW 120 can be found in the murky clouds encircled by the tail of the constellation Scorpius.
Named RCW 120, this region of hot gas and glowing dust can be found in the murky clouds encircled by the tail of the constellation Scorpius. The ring of dust actually is glowing in infrared colors that our eyes cannot see, but show up brightly when viewed by Spitzer’s infrared detectors. At the center of this ring are a couple of giant stars whose intense ultraviolet light has carved out the bubble, though they blend in with other stars when viewed in infrared. This bubble is far from unique. Just as the Guardians of Oa have selected many beings to serve as Green Lanterns and patrol different sectors of space, Spitzer has found that such bubbles are common and an can be found around O stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy. The small objects at the lower right area of the image may themselves be similar regions seen at much greater distances across the galaxy.
March 17, 2024 at 9:46 PM
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Our artful universe 🎨
Winds from bright, hot, young stars carve cavities in a nebula while ultraviolet radiation ionizes the surrounding gas. Orange streaks signify carbon-based molecules important to the formation of stars and planets! https://go.nasa.gov/4cbJtCx
At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is an opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula, including two tiny cavities at the top center of the image. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside the nebula, most of them are yellow or white. At 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with 8 diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disk-shaped galaxies scattered across the image.
March 15, 2024 at 8:59 PM
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WASP-189 b is a gas giant exoplanet larger than Jupiter. It's 325 light-years away and a year there, one spin around its star, takes 3.5 days. https://go.nasa.gov/3Ti5TsX
An artist's concept illustration shows a gas giant exoplanet with clouds and bands in shades of orange. It is labeled WASP-189 b, a giant planet composed mainly of gas, with hypothetical visualization labeled in the bottom right corner.
March 15, 2024 at 6:28 PM
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A scattering of stars shining for you✨
@NASAHubble captured a loose collection of bright stars strewn across the cosmos in this image of a section of Messier 67, 2,700 light-years away.
https://go.nasa.gov/3vmAddY
A scattering of white and reddish stars on a black background. Hubble's detailed view of a small portion of M67 showcases some of the open cluster's stars. The spikes surrounding many of the stars in this image are “diffraction spikes,” which occur when the glow from bright points of light reflects off of Hubble's secondary mirror support. NASA, ESA, and J. Krist (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) This picture shows a ground based image of open cluster Messier 44 with many stars, and a small callout box near the right-center of the cluster that shows the location of the Hubble image. The smaller, ground-based image (lower left) taken by the Digitized Sky Survey illustrates the small area of Messier 67 that Hubble observed. Ground-based image: Digitized Sky Survey; Hubble image: NASA, ESA and J. Krist (Jet Propulsion Laboratory): Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
March 14, 2024 at 10:00 PM
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Hi, hi, hi! Are you ready for pi, pi, pi?
Can you use π (pi) to solve these stellar math problems faced by @NASA scientists and engineers?
https://go.nasa.gov/3Iyouw9
An illustrated image of a cat chasing a laser is shown at the end of a laser signal making its way from the Psyche spacecraft to Earth.
March 14, 2024 at 5:37 PM