Mar 02 2009
Looking Farther (10): Riding Fire
Astronauts ride a controlled fire beyond the sky. It blows my mind to think about it. The times I’ve watched a shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral . . . wow. [photo thanks to NASA]
In four days another launch is scheduled — an unmanned one. The Delta 2 Kepler Rocket will burn its way into space for this purpose:
The mission will spend three and a half years surveying more than 100,000 sun-like stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. It is expected to find hundreds of planets the size of Earth and larger orbiting at various distances from their stars. If Earth-size planets are common in the habitable zone (where conditions favor liquid water), Kepler could find dozens of worlds like ours. On the other hand, if those planets are rare, Kepler might find none.
The Kepler telescope is specially designed to detect the periodic dimming of stars caused by transiting planets. Some star systems are oriented in such a way that their planets cross in front of their stars, as seen from our Earthly point of view. As the planets transit, they cause their stars’ light to slightly dim, or wink. The telescope can register changes in brightness of only 20 parts per million.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
