National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said the images show the 3 1/2-year mission's target patch of sky -- a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way galaxy.
NASA said one Kepler image shows a 100-square-degree portion of the sky that contains an estimated 14 millions stars -- more than 100,000 of which were selected as ideal candidates for planet hunting.
The Kepler mission is the first with the ability to find planets similar to the Earth -- small, rocky planets orbiting sun-like stars in areas where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans of water to exist.
"Everything about Kepler has been optimized to find Earth-size planets," said James Fanson, Kepler's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Our images are road maps that will allow us, in a few years, to point to a star and say a world like ours is there."
Scientists and engineers will spend the next few weeks calibrating Kepler's instruments. Once those steps are complete, the planet hunt will begin.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International.
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