The Kepler Space telescope took its first images of the region of the galaxy where it will hunt for planets.

The full-field view (below) contains approximately 4.5 million stars, and astronomers have selected more than 100,000 of them as good candidates for orbiting rocky planets.

"We expect to find hundreds of planets circling those stars" William Borucki, head of the Kepler mission at NASA. "And for the first time, we can look for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones around other stars like the sun.”

Kepler is the first space telescope with this capability, thanks to its 95-megapixel camera, the largest ever sent to space. The telescope will spend the next 3.5 years taking a closer at the targeted stars, waiting for their light to dim periodically as orbiting planets pass in front of them.

For the next few weeks, NASA will calibrate Kepler's instruments, and then the hunt will be on.

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Images: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech