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Planets Orbiting HR 8799

This video shows four Jupiter-sized exoplanets orbiting billions of miles away from their star in the nearby HR 8799 system. The planetary system is oriented face-on toward Earth, giving astronomers a unique bird’s-eye view of the planets’ motion. The exoplanets are orbiting so far away from their star that they take anywhere from decades to centuries to complete an orbit. The video consists of seven images of the system taken over a seven-year period with the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Keck’s coronagraph blocks out most of the starlight so that the much fainter and smaller exoplanets can be seen.

  • Release Date
    April 21, 2021
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Webb to Study Young Exoplanets on the Edge
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Video: Jason Wang (Caltech), Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg)

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Related Images & Videos

Side-by-side annotated coronagraphic telescope images showing the locations of exoplanets orbiting a star

HR 8799 Exoplanet System (Hubble)

Left: This is an image of the star HR 8799 taken by Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in 1998. A mask within the camera (coronagraph) blocks most of the light from the star. Astronomers also used software to digitally subtract more starlight....

Diagram of four exoplanets orbiting the star HR 8799.

HR 8799 Exoplanet System: Positional Schematic

This schematic shows the positions of the four exoplanets orbiting far away from the nearby star HR 8799. The orbits appear elongated because of a slight tilt of the plane of the orbits relative to our line of sight. The size of the HR 8799 planetary system is comparable to our...

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Exoplanet 51 Eridani b (Gemini)

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Coronagraph image showing planets orbiting an eclipsed star

Planet Orbiting 51 Eridani

This video shows a Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting far away — roughly 11 billion miles — from a nearby, Sun-like star, 51 Eridani. The planetary system is oriented face-on toward Earth, giving astronomers a unique bird’s-eye view of the planet’s motion. The video consists of...

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Details

Last Updated
Aug 28, 2025
Contact
Media

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

Video Credit

Jason Wang (Caltech), Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg)

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