Kepler Mission Discovers First Nearly-Earth-Sized Cradle for a New Human Genesis

NASA space scientists have discovered the first nearly Earth-sized exoplanet lying within the habitable zone of its Sun-like parent star 

This artist’s concept compares Earth (left) to the new planet, called Kepler-452b, which is about 60 percent larger in diameter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Space news (July 23, 2015) – 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus –

Twenty years after proving other planets do exist the human journey to the beginning of space and time draws nearer to finding an Earth-like cradle for a new human Genesis. 

This artist’s concept depicts one possible appearance of the planet Kepler-452b, the first near-Earth-size world to be found in the habitable zone of a star that is similar to our sun.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first nearly Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of a star much like our own Sun. Called Kepler-452b and roughly 60 percent bigger than our home planet, this exoplanet is the smallest planet found orbiting at a distance from its parent star where liquid water could exist.

“On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.“

A Star Like Our Sun

This size and scale of the Kepler-452 system compared alongside the Kepler-186 system and the solar system. Kepler-186 is a miniature solar system that would fit entirely inside the orbit of Mercury.
Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech/R. Hurt

Kepler-452b’s parent star is an older cousin to the Sun, a G2 type star approximately 20 percent brighter, 1.5 billion years older, and 10 percent bigger than Earth’s home star.

“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452b. “It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life to exist on this planet.”

A Rocky Exoplanet like Earth?

Since Kepler launched in 2009, twelve planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars.
Credits: NASA/N. Batalha and W. Stenzel

Kepler-452b is the twelfth exoplanet the human journey to the beginning of space and time has viewed lying within the habitable zone of its parent star. Data collected by both space and Earth-based telescopes indicates planets of this size are often rocky in nature. Indicating the possibility this exoplanet could have an atmosphere and environment that could act as a cradle for a new human Genesis to begin. 

A New Human Genesis!

Humans traveling across spacetime to Kepler-452b would evolve during a voyage lasting thousands or even hundreds of years. Extended hibernation of some type would certainly make the journey easier, but this kind of technology hasn’t been developed. An alternative solution to extended periods living in space during a voyage unlike any humans have undertaken is probably a necessity.

Once we land on Kepler-452b, learning to survive and live on this foreign planet will evolve us once again. Humans are designed to evolve in order to survive living in different environments. We would likely survive as a species, but doing so would change us in ways we can’t begin to imagine.

521 New Candidates for the Exoplanet Zoo

There are 4,696 planet candidates now known with the release of the seventh Kepler planet candidate catalog – an increase of 521 since the release of the previous catalog in January 2015.
Credits: NASA/W. Stenzel

At the same time, NASA released this news it announced the Kepler mission’s discovery of 521 new exoplanet candidates for the exoplanet zoo. 12 of these candidates orbit their parent star within the habitable zone and nine have home stars similar to the Sun in both size and temperature. Great news for the human desire to locate a second Earth to live on. 

“We’ve been able to fully automate our process of identifying planet candidates, which means we can finally assess every transit signal in the entire Kepler dataset quickly and uniformly,” said Jeff Coughlin, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who led the analysis of a new candidate catalog. “This gives astronomers a statistically sound population of planet candidates to accurately determine the number of small, possibly rocky planets like Earth in our Milky Way galaxy.”

NASA space scientists will now take a closer look at each of the exoplanet candidates and specifically the ones lying within the habitable zone of their parent star. There could be a second Earth, a cradle for a new human Genesis, waiting to be discovered. An event that would change the course of human history on planet Earth and the way we view ourselves as cosmic beings.

To learn more about the Kepler mission go here.

To learn more about NASA’s space mission visit here.

Read about NASA’s Europa Orbiter and plans to take a closer look at one of the best places in the solar system to look for life other than Earth.

Learn more about ice geysers erupting from the frozen surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus helping to create the E ring of the second biggest planet in the solar system.

Learn about the mystery surrounding the existence of ultra-luminous x-ray sources in the cosmos and ways space scientists are beginning to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding these mysterious objects.

Planetary Space Scientists Use Hubble Space Telescope to Map Temperature and Water Vapor on “Hot Jupiter” Class Exoplanet

Data shows gravitationally locked exoplanet with extreme temperature variations between day and night 

This is a temperature map of the “hot Jupiter” class exoplanet WASP 43b. The white-colored region on the daytime side is 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The nighttime side temperatures drop to under 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Image Credit: NASA

Space news (October 25, 2014) –

NASA planetary space scientists using data provided by the Hubble Space Telescope recently released the first detailed global map of atmosphere temperatures and water vapor distributions on a “hot Jupiter” class exoplanet. Initially detected in 2011, WASP-43b as this exoplanet is called, is the world where daytime temperatures reach 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and then plunge to below 1,000 degrees at night.

“These measurements have opened the door for new kinds of ways to compare the properties of different types of planets,” said team leader Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago.

“Our observations are the first of their kind in terms of providing a two-dimensional map on the longitude and altitude of the planet’s thermal structure that can be used to constrain atmospheric circulation and dynamical models for hot exoplanets,” said team member Kevin Stevenson of the University of Chicago.

Planetary space scientists were able to detect three complete orbits of WASP-43b, during a four-day period. They were able to successfully combine spectroscopy and study of the rotation of the exoplanet to create the first detailed global map of atmosphere temperatures and water vapor distributions on a “hot Jupiter” class exoplanet.

WASP-43b is 260 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sextans, which is too distant to be imaged directly by instruments. Planetary space scientists were first able to detect this “hot Jupiter” class exoplanet by observing the lessening of the sunlight as it passed in front of its parent star.

Approximately the same volume as Jupiter, WASP-43b is approximately twice as dense and is so close to its parent star it completes an orbit in just 19 hours. This exoplanet is also gravitationally locked, which means one side is perpetually in the dark, while the other side is constantly bombarded by sunlight.

There are no planets in our solar system exhibiting the extreme environments existing on WASP-43b. This makes it a unique laboratory for the study of the formation and evolution of “hot Jupiter” class exoplanets and planets in general.

“The planet is so hot that all the water in its atmosphere is vaporized, rather than condensed into icy clouds like on Jupiter,” said team member Laura Kreidberg of the University of Chicago.

“The amount of water in the giant planets of our solar system is poorly known because water that has precipitated out of the upper atmospheres of cool gas giant planets like Jupiter is locked away as ice. But so-called “hot Jupiters,” gas giants that have high surface temperatures because they orbit very close to their stars, water is a vapor that can be readily traced.”

“Water is thought to play an important role in the formation of giant planets, since comet-like bodies bombard young planets, delivering most of the water and other molecules that we can observe,” said Jonathan Fortney, a member of the team from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Next for scientists?

Planetary space scientists will now try to figure out how abundant different elements are in the composition of WASP-43b, and similar exoplanets, in order to help understand how they’re formed. The team also plans to collect data on the abundance of water on different classes of exoplanets in the future.

You can read more about NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the hunt for exoplanets here.

Visit here to learn more about all of NASA’s space missions to the stars.

Read about NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover

Read about ancient skywatchers of the American southwest

Read about the most distant galaxy ever viewed during the human journey to the beginning of space and time

Space Exploration Takes Time

It took five decades to develop and ultimately launch the Hubble Space Telescope 

Artists conception of possible successor to the Hubble Space Telescope Image Credit NASA

Future space telescopes (Oct. 15, 2014) –

Traveling and exploring space is an adventure unlike anything experienced by travelers during thousands of years of life on Earth. A space journey requires careful planning, patience, and determination far beyond any adventure ever undertaken by people traveling over land or water. Exploring space for possible new worlds orbiting distant stars takes a space telescope requiring decades to develop and ultimately launch into space.

For example, the space telescope most people associate with hunting for new worlds, the Hubble Space Telescope, took five decades to design, engineer and finally launch into space. In the same fashion, the James Webb Space Telescope is expected to make the leap into space in 2018, almost 24 years after work first started on the idea. In fact, NASA engineers and scientists believe it will take so long to actually build a true successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, they have already started work on a replacement.

Dubbed the Advanced Telescope Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST), the successor to the first planet hunter incorporates improved technology first pioneered by the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. Studying the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared universe, ATLAST is designed to be a long-term space observatory for the next phase of the human journey to the beginning of space and time. Engineers and scientists are currently taking a look at the costs and scientific and technical requirements of constructing a replacement planet hunter sometime within the next twenty or thirty years.

Team of NASA scientists and engineers studying the feasibility and costs of building ATLAST Images Credit NASA

“Conceptually, ATLAST would leverage the technological advances pioneered by the Webb telescope, such as deployable, large segmented mirror arrays,” said Mark Clampin, ATLAST study scientist and Webb’s project scientist.

“We will be leveraging a lot of heritage from the Webb telescope and then developing new technologies over the next few years for the primary mirror assembly, wavefront sensing and control, and ultra-stable structures to achieve this wavefront error stability,” Clampin said.

“One of the killer apps currently planned for ATLAST is the ability to detect signatures of life in the atmospheres of Earth-like planets in the solar neighborhood,” Clampin said.“While other observatories will image larger exoplanets, they would not have ATLAST’s advanced ability to identify chemicals that may indicate the presence of life in these far-flung, Earth-size worlds.”

ATLAST will reside in the same Sun-Earth L2 orbit the James Webb Space Telescope will occupy once it’s launched around 2018. Carrying a state-of-the-art star shade designed to help reduce the light from an Earth-sized planet’s home star, ATLAST should detect worlds that could be a new cradle for the human race to begin life again.

ATLAST also has a large main mirror capable of studying star and galaxy birth in high definition. It would be able to provide detailed images of stars in galaxies over 10 million light-years away and regions of space where new stars are being created over 100 parsecs in size anywhere in the visible universe. This mirror would be quite a bit larger than the largest segmented mirror NASA has ever launched into space, the one on the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA identified a need to begin development of a replacement for Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope in a recent document outlining its vision for astrophysics during the next three decades titled “Enduring Quests, Daring Visions“.

“While people expect Hubble and Webb to operate for many years, we are looking ahead to the telescope and instrument requirements needed to answer the questions posed in NASA’s 30-year vision,” said Harley Thronson, the Goddard senior scientist for Advanced Concepts in Astrophysics and ATLAST study scientist.

“ATLAST would achieve critically important science goals not possible with ground-based observatories or with any other planned space missions,” added Thronson. “Now is the time to plan for the future.”

“One of the pertinent attributes about ATLAST is that it’s being designed to be modular and serviceable, following the Hubble Space Telescope model,” observed Julie Crooke, one of the Goddard study leads. “Mission planners would design the observatory so that it could be serviced to upgrade instrumentation — a potential capability that depends on available budget and science requirements. Serviceability has been one of the great paradigms in mission architecture that separates the Hubble Space Telescope from all of the other space missions to date,” Crooke said.

You can find more information on ATLAST here.

For more information on the James Webb Space Telescope visit here.

Read about methane clouds over the northern seas of Titan

Read about icy geysers on Enceladus

Read about our calculations concerning the possibility of intelligent life existing in the universe other than on Earth

Earth-size Planet Discovered Orbiting Within Habitable Zone of Star

Earth-sized planets could be more common than we first assumed

This artist’s conception of Kepler-186f is elegant, but still imagination at work

Space news (astrophysics: exoplanets; Kepler-186f )

NASA astronomers working with the Kepler Space Telescope have discovered the first Earth-sized planet orbiting within the ‘habitable zone’ of its host star. Kepler-186f, as its name implies, is in the Kepler-186 star system, around 500 light-years from Sol in the constellation Cygnus. A discovery that implies planets the size of Earth, residing within their host star’s habitable zone, could be more common than we first thought.

Space scientists believe there’s a good chance Kepler-186f is a rocky planet, similar in many ways to the Earth. The fact it resides within the habitable zone implies liquid water could exist on the surface of this planet and possibly life based on the same principles as on Earth. The M dwarf, or red dwarf, sun it orbits is a common star making up about 70 percent of the suns in our home galaxy and is only half the volume and mass of Sol. This star is also orbited by four other planets, according to the latest information, but this number could change as more data is obtained.

“The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth,” said Paul Hertz, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind’s quest to find truly Earth-like worlds.”

NASA astronomers have no idea, yet, what Kepler-186f is made of, or even its mass. They’ll now focus more instruments and time to look into some of these facts, and hopefully, soon we’ll know a lot more about this possible twin-Earth.

“We know of just one planet where life exists — Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth,” said Elisa Quintana, a research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. “Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward.”

Earth-size planets are more familiar to scientists than the larger planets discovered lying within the habitable zone of their host stars. It will be easier to understand the data they obtain concerning Kepler-186f, and hopefully, this translates into a better picture of the planet.

“M dwarfs are the most numerous stars,” said Quintana. “The first signs of other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf.”

What would a day on Kepler-186f be like? This planet is near the outer boundary of its host star’s habitable zone, which results in it receiving about 30 percent of the energy Earth gets from Sol. Viewed from the surface of the planet at high noon, the host star would only be as bright as Sol an hour before sunset. A day on Kepler-186f isn’t going to be a walk in the park on a sunny day.

“Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has,” said Thomas Barclay, a research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper. “Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth.”

What’s next for the team?

The next step for NASA astronomers is to find Earth-size planets that are a true twin for Earth, which will be a day to remember. Determining the chemical composition of any planets found will be an exciting time for both astronomers and humankind. A planet with a similar chemical composition to Earth would open up eyes and change the prospect of the possibility of alien life in the galaxy and universe.

It would truly be something to experience.

What is the possibility of alien life existing in the universe? Read “The Possibility of Intelligent Lifeforms Existing in the Universe”.

What has Kepler discovered lately? Read “Kepler Mission Introduces 715 New Planets“

Read about “The Search for Life Beyond Earth Takes a Turn at Jupiter“

Watch this YouTube video on Kepler-186f

The Possibility of Intelligent Lifeforms Existing in the Universe

Crunching the numbers leaves little doubt in the minds of many scientists and broad thinkers

Astronomers can provide a rough estimate of the number of stars in a galaxy

Space news – We can estimate the number of galaxies and thus approximately how many stars there are in the universe. Can we extrapolate the number of possible intelligent lifeforms in the universe? Lifeforms with an advanced civilization and technology?

Astronomers also have a very rough estimate for the number of galaxies they see

NASA astronomers are finding more and more planets orbiting distant stars using the Hubble Space Telescope. Space scientists on Earth find microbes still surviving after thousands of years frozen in ice and thriving in environments we once thought hostile to life.

NASA astronomers have confirmed the existence of exoplanets orbiting distant stars

Astronomers estimate the Milky Way contains around 400 billion suns, give or take a few. Sol is only one of these stars. They also estimate the universe holds a minimum of 125 billion galaxies.

If we crunch the numbers a bit, we find the universe contains roughly 400 X 125 billion billion, or 50,000 billion billion stars. We won’t at this time include the number of planets per sun in the universe, which would make our estimate even less precise. NASA space scientists and astronomers haven’t determined this number and the knowledge we have now isn’t sufficient enough to come to even a rough estimate.

How many of these suns have intelligent life living on a planet in orbit with a highly advanced civilization and technology? In future articles, we’ll try to narrow this number down a bit, by estimating the number of intelligent life forms in the Milky Way.

Let me know what you think? Take part in our poll below.

Warren Wong, 

Managing Editor

Learn how orbits of asteroids within the Main Asteroid belt are calculated.

Learn more about the search for life on Europa.

Read about the African Dogon tribe and their cosmology.

Kepler Mission Introduces 715 New Planets

This artist’s conception of depicts multiple-transiting planet systems seen edge-on from the vantage point of the viewer

Astronomy News –

NASA announced recently the Kepler mission had found another 715 planets orbiting distant stars. Astronomers determined these planets orbit a total of 305 stars, but this total could change after all the facts are in. This points to a lot more multiple planet-star systems, like our own solar system existing in the Milky Way.

NASA announced recently the Kepler mission had found another 715 planets orbiting distant stars. Astronomers determined these planets orbit a total of 305 stars, but this total could change after all the facts are in. This points to a lot more multiple planet-star systems, like our own solar system existing in the Milky Way.

NASA announced recently the Kepler mission had found another 715 planets orbiting distant stars. Astronomers determined these planets orbit a total of 305 stars, but this total could change after all the facts are in. This points to a lot more multiple planet-star systems, like our own solar system existing in the Milky Way.

Kepler-62f looks dark and foreboding in this artist’s conception of the exo-planet

Astronomers believe around 95 percent of these newly discovered planets are smaller than Neptune, which is nearly four times larger than Earth. This means Earth-size planets outside our own solar system are a lot more common than astronomers first thought.

Kepler-62e is depicted in this artist’s conception

“The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”

Work still to be done

Astronomers have had two decades to work out a new way to identify planets among the thousands of star systems they examine using the Kepler Space Telescope and other instruments. The initial process involves laboriously doing a planet-by-planet analysis to determine if a candidate is a planet. Astronomers now use a statistical technique, which they apply to star systems they think have more than one planet.

Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, and a team of scientists analyzed star systems they think have more than one planet. All of these planet candidates were initially found in the first two years of the Kepler Mission – May 2009 to March 2011.

The statistical technique they used is called verification by multiplicity and it partly uses mathematical probability to determine if a candidate is a planet. Astronomers have observed that planets tend to be found together while stars like to roam on their own. If they find a candidate has two or more planet candidates, then it’s probably a star, with orbiting planets. Using these statistical technique astronomers were able to find these 715 new planets.

“Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates –but they were only candidate worlds,” said Lissauer. “We’ve now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds.”

At least four of these new planets astronomers believe are only 2.5 bigger than Earth and orbit their home sun at a distance compatible with the possibility of life. Planets that fall within the habitable zone, or goldilocks zone, of their home star, are planets where water could exist in its various forms. Astronomers believe the temperature and conditions on these four planets could be suitable for biological life forms to exist.

This artist’s conception is of Kepler-69 and its possible solar system

The home star of one of these new planets called Kepler-296f, astronomers believe is only half the mass and 5 percent of our own Sun. Kepler-296f astronomers believe is at least twice the size of Earth and they’re wondering if it could be a gaseous world, with a thick soupy atmosphere, or possibly a water planet, with a life-sustaining ocean of water.

What’s next?

“From this study, we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular — resembling pancakes — not your classical view of an atom,” said Jason Rowe, a research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research. “The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home.”

With the latest planets discovered, this puts the total number of planets the Kepler mission has found at around 1,700. Around 961 of these candidates, NASA is sure are planets. One day we will venture out into the unknown of space and land on one of these distant planets. Each planet we discover brings us closer to this day.

You can view the Stream feed here www.ustream.tv/channel/NASA-arc

For more information on the Kepler Space Telescope and its mission to discover planets visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Read this article on the year ahead for the human journey to the beginning of space and time

Read this article on the Chelyabinsk meteorite

Read this article on a supernova NASA thinks could have given birth to a black hole

Sources:

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/digital-press-kit-kepler-planet-bonanza

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries

NASA’s Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds

All images and diagrams provided by NASA.

Searching for Extraterrestrial Moons

NASA astronomers are optimistic that they’ll eventually be able to detect transiting exomoons

Question: Is it possible to detect moons orbiting distant exoplanets? How would this be accomplished?

Questions from the kids (2013-12-30) – If we use our own solar system as an example, we would expect exoplanets to have bodies similar to our own Moon orbiting them. Exomoons, as we’ll refer to them, would be small in comparison to their host planets, and this fact is going to make it more difficult to detect them at the extreme distances involved.

NASA scientists believe exomoons could be a good place for life to start and thrive in many solar systems

Despite this fact, astronomers believe exomoons should be detectable, using the same techniques and for the same reasons exoplanets are detected. Exomoons have mass, which means they’ll interact gravitationally with their host planet and sun, causing the exoplanet to move in a mathematically predictable manner in response to the force of gravity. The exomoon will constantly pull on the planet gravitationally, which changes the amount of time it takes the planet to pass in front of its host sun. If an exomoon lines up with its home sun from our point of view here on Earth, this would cause a resulting collection of dips in measured sunlight, just before or after the much more significant transits of the host planet in front of its star. Astronomers believe they can use this fact in the future, along with any new techniques they develop, to search for and find distant exomoons orbiting their home planets.

This detection technique is the most practical way astronomers have developed in order to search for and find distant exomoons. This method provides astronomers with a more direct technique to use in the search for exomoons and at present is the best way to do the job. Currently, NASA’s Kepler telescope, which is looking for smaller transiting exoplanets, is probably our best chance of finding a distant exomoon orbiting its home planet. The Kepler telescope really isn’t designed to search for and find distant exomoons, which makes the job a truly daunting task using this telescope. If we use the largest moon in our solar system, Jupiter’s Ganymede, as an example, we would find Ganymede’s diameter is only about 40 percent of Earth’s. This means Ganymede would only block about 0.0014 percent of the Sun’s light during any transit, which is around six times less than the amount blocked by an Earth transit.

The human journey to the beginning of space and time could one day discover an exomoon looking like this

All of this is based upon the data and information astronomers have concerning our own solar system, which could be too general, or just wrong. It could be Earth-sized moons orbit transiting planets as large as Jupiter or Saturn, which would mean Kepler would just be able to detect them, and make it possible to search for and find distant exomoons orbiting their home planets.

The best bet astronomers have of finding exomoons orbiting their home planets light-years away will probably be the James Webb Space Telescope once it comes online. This will be when the human journey to the beginning of space and time has the best chance of searching for and finding exomoons orbiting their home planets.

Read about NASA’s Messenger spacecraft and its mission to Mercury

Have you heard about the recent meteorite that exploded near the Ural Mountains

Read about the supernova astronomers are studying looking for a black hole they think was created during the explosion

Planets! Planets! It’s Full of Planets!

Planets! Planets! It’s full of planets!

The portion of the sky the Hubble Space Telescope is currently looking at is full of planets both big and small

Astronomy News – One of the greatest things about being an astronomer is the excitement of mystery and wonder you feel every time you discover something you never even suspected. This must have been the feeling running through the minds of astronomers looking at the data provided by the Hubble Space Telescope indicating the presence of planets around distant stars. The rush of adrenalin as they went over the data they had worked and waited for must have been truly euphoric.

The Hubble Space Telescope helped us discover the cosmos is full of planets

What kind of planets would they find? Smaller rocky worlds like Earth, larger gas planets like Jupiter, or some unusual planet never before dreamed of. All of their hard work and dedication to the task-at-hand is about to open a door of discovery to worlds of wonder. Worlds with environments unlike anything we have experienced on Earth, where life we could never envision might have evolved. This is why astronomers spend countless days, weeks, months and ultimately lives studying the sky above our heads.

Rocky planets like Earth are starting to be found also

Astronomers see a sky full of planets

The small portion of the sky being studied by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope is full of planets. Some appear to be of a similar rocky composition to our home planet while others appear to be totally inhospitable to Earth-type life. Planets like Earth are thought to be mainly composed of rocky material, which is denser and thus heavier than the materials making up gas planets. The planets being found orbiting stars in the portion of the sky being surveyed by Hubble are helping to rewrite planet formation theory and other areas of astronomical study. Astronomers are finding planets of types they were expecting to find, and a few they weren’t expecting to see.

Gas planets composed mainly of carbon dioxide!

The first planets found by the Hubble Space Telescope were large gas giants, like Jupiter and Saturn, but more recent finds have included planets similar in size and possible composition to Earth. Astronomers want to study Earth-like planets in an effort to uncover more secrets concerning the birth of our own solar system and the planet, which could give us clues to the development and evolution of Earth-like life in our universe. More recent developments even include the first direct imaging of a planet orbiting a distant star.

A planet has now been seen orbiting a distant star

The truly amazing part is Hubble is only surveying a portion of the sky with around 100,000 suns and we’re finding more and more planets as astronomers continue to refine their planet finding techniques and instruments. Once we extrapolate and calculate the number of possible planets, using the available data so far gathered, we find the number of possible planets to be beyond count.

Most of the planets found have been within 300 light years of Sol

Astronomers will use the James Webb Space Telescope to journey to the beginning of space and time

During the 2013 human space odyssey, astronomers explored a portion of the night sky with the Hubble Space Telescope and exclaimed. It’s full of planets! In the years ahead during the human journey to the beginning of space and time, we expect astronomers to discover undreamed-of worlds, revolving around suns we humans can’t even conceive of. Especially once the James Webb Space Telescope comes online we should expect to visit undreamed of planets.

This is the Near Infrared Spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be used to try to find more planets

Best to buckle your seatbelt and prepare for the ride of your life! The human journey to the beginning of space and time is about to take off to planets beyond imagination. In the months and years ahead we expect to visit worlds with environments we would find inhospitable at best. Worlds where human survival would be doubtful and any life we found would be unusual beyond imagination.

Click this link to watch a YouTube video on weird planets in the universe.

Weirdest Planets

Read about NASA’s Messenger spacecraft and its mission to Mercury

Have you heard about the recent meteorite that exploded near the Ural Mountains

Read about the supernova astronomers are studying looking for a black hole they think was created during the explosion

The First Possible Cradle for a New Human Genesis?

Six exo-planets are circling red dwarf star Gliese 581 20 light-years distant in the constellation Libra

 

Astronomy News – The human search for an exoplanet capable of being a cradle for a new human genesis found what many consider the first exoplanet with the physical makeup to make it possible. A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institute of Washington recently announced to the world the discovery of an exoplanet they believe has a few characteristics of an exoplanet with the right stuff to make life possible. Gliese 581g, as it’s referred too, has about three times the mass of Earth and appears to be situated in the right spot in the solar system of the red dwarf star Gliese 581 for the ingredients of life to exist. This is about dead center in what planet scientists term the habitable zone of Gliese 581, a position planet scientists believe could make it possible for water and an atmosphere to exist on this exoplanet, necessary ingredients for the formation of life, planet scientists believe. 

Astronomers search for a cradle for a new human genesis

 

These planet hunters have been using one of the largest time-machine-to-the-stars on the planet, the Keck I Telescope in Hawaii’s W.M Keck Observatory, to journey 20 light years to the constellation of Libra to continue the search for more planets circling red dwarf star Gliese 581 that could be habitable. Planet hunters have been using the HIRES spectrometer to precisely measure the radial velocity of the host star – the motion of the star along the line of sight from Earth – and stars close to red dwarf star Gliese 581, in order to try to find other planets circling this red dwarf star. The gravitational pull of orbiting planets causes periodic changes in the radial velocity of the host star that astronomers can calculate using sophisticated mathematical techniques we’ll cover on another day. These are the techniques planet hunters used in order to find all of the stars they have found circling red dwarf star Gliese 581, which after the two most recent planet discoveries, brings the total to six exoplanets circling this distant star.

Astronomers believe Gliese 581g is in the habitable zone of its home star

 

The discovery of six exoplanets circling red dwarf star Gliese 581 marks the high-planet mark for the human hunt for planets capable of being a cradle for a new human genesis. Gliese 581g is the only planet of the six exoplanets discovered that astronomers have indicated, so far, as being in the life zone of the red dwarf star Gliese 581. This exoplanet orbits its parent star in about 37 days and measurements planet scientists have made of its mass indicates it’s probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and enough gravity to hang onto an atmosphere. Gliese 581g is also tidally locked to its parent star, which means that one side of the planet is always facing its host star and in perpetual daylight. This makes some planet scientists believe that the best place for life to exist would be in the terminator, the part of the planet between the day and night sides of the planet.

  

Is this how the day would look on the daylight side of Gliese 581g?

 

 

Is there water on Gliese 581g and an atmosphere? Planet scientists are currently trying to find out

Check out my latest astronomy website at http://astronomytonight.yolasite.com/.

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The More We Look, the More We Wonder?

 

Do we really know anything? 

 

Astronomy News – The more astronomers look around on the human “Journey to the Beginning of Space and Time, the more they realise we really have only scratched the surface of the known universe, and we really know nothing. This is exciting, for sure, for astronomers viewing the universe, but it means space scientists are constantly reworking theories and ideas concerning the universe and the way things really work. Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to view a distant gas-giant planet called Upsilon Andromedae b recently noticed a warm spot on this planet’s surface that according to previous ideas seems to be a bit out of position. Upsilon Andromedae b circles very closely to its parent star and belongs to a class of planets astronomers refer to as hot Jupiters, because of the intense temperatures and large, gaseous makeup of these planets. One face of this planet is always directly facing the intense heat produced by the sun and because of this, it would seem logical that the hottest parts of this planet should be directly facing the sun. Previous views of hot Jupiters have shown astronomers that it was possible for hot spots on these types of planets to be slightly shifted away from the sun’s direct heat. The viewing of this hot spot on Upsilon Andromedae b using the Spitzer Space Telescope has thrown a wrench into this idea, though, because the hot spot on Upsilon Andromedae b, is offset by a whopping 80 degrees, and sits practically on the other side of the planet. 

 

Every time we get one answer, ten more questions appear

This is very disconcerting to astronomers who were thinking they were beginning to figure a few things out about hot-Jupiter type planets. Scientists are presently working at trying to figure out how the hottest spot on Upsilon Andromedae b could be so far from the main source of heat in the solar system? In this effort they’re currently looking at similar hot Jupiters to Upsilon Andromedae b, to see if they can find any clue to this mystery, and we’ll keep you updated as the human “Journey to the Beginning of Space and Time continues.

How did this warm spot get over here on the cool side of the planet?

Check out my latest astronomy project at http://astronomytonight.yolasite.com/.

Learn why astronomy binoculars are a popular choice with amateur astronomers

Read about the Anasazi Indians

Read about astronomers viewing a supernova they think might have given birth to a black hole