The Kepler Space Telescope watches more than 156,000 stars in its field of view which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky. "The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water." See also: News Release of 2011 Feb 2 (NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System)

Credit: NASA Ames/Bill Moede