Well now that NASA's Deep Impact has finished blowing holes in comets, which it did to Comet Tempel 1 in July 2005 to help scientists study what was beneath its surface, it's moving on to discover new worlds, exosolar worlds (planets around stars) to be exact. Between now and Oct. 11, 2010, when Deep Impact has its next flyby with Comet Hartley 2; the probe will be searching for planets. The spacecraft will be focusing its largest telescope at five stars, hoping to catch a glimpse of a planetary transit. This is where a planet dims the light from its parent star as it passes in front. This new mission, now called EPOXI, a hybrid of Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (Epoch) and Deep Impact Extended Investigation (Dixi), began on January 22. The stars that were picked were known to have giant planets with massive atmospheres, like Jupiter in our solar system. Though the scientists of the program hope to find planets more like Earth in size and mass.Most of the 200 exosolar planets that have been discovered so far have been detected indirectly, by the gravitational pull they exert on their parent star. Though sometimes they can be found when they eclipse their parent star. With this project NASA will hopefully find some Earth-like exoplanets and add to the growing list, and add to the small amount of info that had been gathered on this subject.
Source: NASA News Release
Image Source: NASA.gov
The Fool
Posts
3 comments:
This is a cool story, thanks for posting it, hope they find some Earth type planets, great idea.
I think that initiative is what all of us wanted to hear because our planet can't resist the human's impact that's the reason there are people looking for other alternatives.m10m
Nice post. Great blog. Thanks for sharing. It was very interesting and informative.
Web Design|Web Development|
Post a Comment