Sunday, February 8, 2009

Space Telescope To Boost Hunt For Alien Earths

Kepler Telescope (Image from Nasa)

From The New Scientist:

HOW common are alien Earths - small, rocky planets orbiting at the right distance to be not so hot that water boils and not so cold that it stays frozen? Till now clues have been hard to come by, because surveys have not been sensitive enough to find many such planets.

That should soon change thanks to the Kepler space telescope, which NASA is expecting to launch on 5 March. Its unique positioning in the solar system and unprecedented sensitivity mean that for the first time we will be able to see Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone" of their stars - the region where the temperature on the planet should be right for liquid water to exist at its surface.

Read more ....

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