Launched by NASA in 2009, the Kepler space telescope was outfitted with equipment to discover and study Earth-sized planets in the Milky Way galaxy. It was named after the 17th century scientist and ...

Astronomers are baffled by Kepler-51’s “super-puff” planets—giant worlds as light as cotton candy. Despite expectations, the James Webb Space Telescope failed to detect their atmospheric signatures, ...

Although astronomers have directly imaged a few dozen gas giants on the scale of Jupiter, Earth-sized planets are too small and dim to be directly imaged. That's not to say there's a shortage of Earth ...

Relative sizes of the newly discovered habitable-zone planets and Earth. Left to right: Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions). Image credit: ...

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The prolific planet-hunting spacecraft that ...