Instructional Video15:45
TED Talks

Garik Israelian: How spectroscopy could reveal alien life

12th - Higher Ed
Garik Israelian is a spectroscopist, studying the spectrum emitted by a star to figure out what it's made of and how it might behave. It's a rare and accessible look at this discipline, which may be coming close to finding a planet...
Instructional Video2:31
Curated Video

Exploring Saturn and the Search for Earth-Like Planets

Pre-K - Higher Ed
This video explores the similarities between Saturn and newly forming star systems, highlighting the relevance of studying Saturn's rings and its moon Titan for understanding planetary formation. It also discusses the detection of over...
Instructional Video5:13
NASA

WFIRST Will See the Big Picture of the Universe

3rd - 11th
Scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will function as Hubble’s wide-eyed cousin. While just as sensitive as Hubble's cameras, WFIRST's 300-megapixel Wide Field...
Instructional Video2:38
NASA

NASA | 'Disk Detectives' Top 1 Million Classifications in Search for Planetary Habitats

3rd - 11th
Citizen scientists using the NASA-sponsored website DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set...
Instructional Video2:23
NASA

NASA | Disk Detective: Search for Planetary Habitats

3rd - 11th
A new NASA-sponsored website, DiskDetective.org, lets the public discover embryonic planetary systems hidden among data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

The site is led and funded by NASA and...
Instructional Video
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Science Behind the News

9th - 10th
A collection of videos highlighting science news. Covers a diverse range of topics such as crowdsourcing, bio-inspired materials, and vaccines.
Instructional Video
NASA

Science at Nasa: Science Casts: A Sudden Multiplication of Planets

9th - 10th
In 2014, NASA announced a breakthrough addition to the catalog of new planets. Researchers using Kepler have confirmed 715 new worlds, almost quadrupling the number of planets previously confirmed by the planet-hunting spacecraft. Some...
Instructional Video
PBS

Pbs Learning Media: Crash Course Astronomy: Exoplanets

9th - 10th
There are other planets out there, and astronomers have a lot of methods for detecting them. Nearly 2000 planets have been found so far. The most successful method for finding them is using transits, where a planet physically passes in...
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: Heating Up on a Distant Planet

9th - 10th
An interview with astronomer Greg Laughlin about planet HD80606b, an exoplanet with extreme fluctuations in its temperature in a matter of hours. Aired Jan. 30, 2009 [10:16 min]
Instructional Video
National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation: Science Behind the News: Extrasolar Planets

9th - 10th
Astronomers are able to map distant extrasolar planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. They mainly use two methods - the Doppler and the Transit methods. [4:35]
Instructional Video
Crash Course

Crash Course Astronomy #27: Exoplanets

9th - 10th
Today Phil explains that YES, there are other planets out there and astronomers have a lot of methods for detecting them. Exoplanets appear to orbit nearly every kind of star, and we've even found planets that are the same size as Earth....
Instructional Video
NASA

Science at Nasa: Science Casts: Weird Planets

9th - 10th
Once, astronomers thought planets couldn't form around binary stars. Now Kepler has found a whole system of planets orbiting a double star. This finding shows that planetary systems are weirder and more abundant than previously thought....
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: Kepler Telescope Narrows Hunt for Earth's Twin

9th - 10th
NASA's Kepler telescope has discovered the first Earth-sized exoplanets, and another which orbits its star in the "Goldilocks zone," where liquid water could exist.
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: Exoplanets Floating Freely, Without a Star

9th - 10th
Ten newly discovered exoplanets are very distant from their host stars, or not orbiting them at all. [20 mins. 55]
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: Exosolar Planet Update

9th - 10th
We'll hear about new work in the field of discovering exosolar planets -- including research that used the Hubble Space Telescope to take optical images of a planet orbiting a star some 25 light years away. [12 mins. 29]
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: Still Cataloging the Skies, Long After "Planet X"

9th - 10th
Arizona's Lowell Observatory, famous for spotting 'Planet X' aka Pluto, hunts for exoplanets today.
Audio
Science Friday Initiative

Science Friday: A Telescope Fails but the Hunt for Exoplanets Continues

9th - 10th
Although the Kepler planet-hunting telescope is no longer operating, discoveries remain to be made in its data to search for distant planets. The audio recording addresses this quest for exoplanets. [24:50]