Images: NASA's Kepler to seek Earth-like planets

This artist's rendering (a portion of a larger portrait of the Milky Way by Jon Lomberg) shows the region of space that Kepler will be observing. Kepler won't be taking close-ups of any planets; rather, it will find them by detecting minute reductions in the brightness of a star when a planet passes between star and spacecraft.

Photo by Jon Lomberg, via NASA

Caption by Jonathan Skillings