The Kepler space telescope examined twenty-one patches of the sky during it’s nine and a half years of operation. Within these regions, Kepler gathered high precision brightness measurements of over half a million stars facilitating the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and yielding insight into a multitude of other astrophysical phenomena. Illustration by Wendy Stenzel. Science content: Jeff Coughlin, Kenneth Mighell, Doug Caldwell, all of NASA Ames. Key words: Kepler, K2, Missions, nasa, Ames research center, spacecraft, FFI, Full Frame Image, fields of view, science.

The Kepler space telescope examined twenty-one patches of the sky during it’s nine and a half years of operation. Within these regions, Kepler gathered high precision brightness measurements of over half a million stars facilitating the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and yielding insight into a multitude of other astrophysical phenomena. Illustration by Wendy Stenzel, Ames Science content: Jeff Coughlin, Kenneth Mighell, Doug Caldwell, all of NASA Ames.