Using a new verification technique, Kepler scientists have confirmed the existence of 715 new exoplanets — four of which are located within their star's habitable zone. It's the single largest windfall of new confirmations at any one time.

It would appear that news of Kepler's demise has been greatly exaggerated. The planet-hunting space telescope, which suffered a major malfunction last May, is back online — and it's already managed to observe another planet.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope is busted and it may never work normally again. But during its four years of exemplary service, the planet-hunting telescope provided astronomers with an unprecedented glimpse into the Milky Way. Here are the most incredible discoveries made by Kepler.

Yet another piece of evidence that our world is not as unique as we feared: There's a solar system out there that's like ours in one extremely vital respect, according to a group of scientists from MIT and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Scientific American has launched a nifty new app that lets you explore exoplanets - planets outside our own solar system - from the comfort of your iPad.

Exoplanet Kepler-19b orbits its star in ways that violate the laws of physics, speeding up and slowing down its orbit for no apparent reason. The only explanation is a second, hidden planet...making it the first "phantom" exoplanet ever found.

This amazing image takes all 1,235 of the candidate planets spotted by NASA's Kepler telescope, and then shows them in orbit around their stars. And all of this is still just the tiniest fraction of the entire Milky Way.

This amazing video brings together all 1,236 exoplanet candidates that the Kepler telescope has spotted, and it imagines how they would look all together in a single solar system. All the planets are to scale and in the correct relative positions to their star. Prepare to be blown away by just how crowded our galaxy…