A Quote by Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain



Telescopes are in some ways like time machines...
They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you're less romantic you can say we're the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmoc, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.



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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Extraterrestrial life???

Where else can life exist other than earth? Thats exactly what Kepler is all set to find out. Its mission is to find planets like our Earth that revolve around stars like our Sun. It will mostly focus on warm zones where water can be maintained without evaporating or solidifying as Ice on the surface of the planets. How will Kepler do this...? Very simple!

Keplers position in Space will allow it to monitor a patch of space for more than 3.5 yrs. That patch will have around 100,000 stars. kepler will pick up sun like stars for its observations. It will constantly look for any gradual dimming and brightning of the star...the reason most likely being, a planet coming in between the star under observation and Kepler itself.

Launch date/time: 2009 March 6 at 10:48 pm EST.

Courtesy: nasa.gov

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