Habitable zone

Plato once said, “Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world into another.” Obviously, astronomy has always been an interest to mankind. We look up into the night sky and feel an urge, something pulling us towards the stars. Many people have been influential in discoveries involving the stars and the planets beyond. From Galileo Galilei to Stephen Hawking, we have learned and discovered amazing things about the universe, and in recent discoveries we have wondered if…

light which is caused by the transits of plants of host stars. These dips in light help in detecting planets in "Habitable Zones". Gliese-581g The planet Gliese 581g is one of six possible planets in the constellation Libra. This exoplanet was discovered in late September 2010. The main reason for such attraction of this planet is the fact that it is in the middle of said habitable zone. Another reason of interest is the mere 20 light-years of distance from earth. This makes Gliese a relatively…

The habitable zone is the region around a star in which planets could potentially have surface temperatures at which liquid water could exist. In order to assess the habitability of a planet there are several requirements that need to be met for example, the planet…

The Kepler Spacecraft For centuries, humankind was unable to distinguish whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. It was nearly impossible to capture the individual signals being emitted from distant planets such as reduced brilliance when the planet passes in front of its parent star without some type of space telescope. Thus, in March 2009, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), launched the Kepler spacecraft. The primary mission of this new instrument was to…

A first generation star would be made of mostly lighter materials rather than planets formed later. Since the Universe was originally made up of light elements (Hydrogen and Helium), the planets that would've been formed then would probably be mostly gas giants or planets that lack heavier elements or metals. The planets that are in the process of forming today are most likely going to be made of more heavy elements, since the dust in the nebulae have had time to condense and form heavier atoms…

related to work in the characterization of exoplanets. She is also involved in related space missions and NASA (Sara Seager Biography). In a search for her most recent papers, Sara Seager’s most current recent research revolves around the search for habitable planets. This seems to stem from Seager’s goal which she announced on her fortieth birthday. With the discovery of another Earth inevitably growing closer and closer, Seager wants to ensure the discovery this planet within her lifetime…

With the vastness of space that contains humanity 's own planet plus billions of others there is almost a grantee of life. As for life it may not to far away the Goldilocks zone still holds a number of discoveries that have not been found. As time advances so does technology that is a given, humanity will continue to advance. It will become smarter, being able to create device able to find heat signal of planets to possibly…

Planet eating stars and giant aliens living in space doesn’t sound that appealing. Why would anyone want to go up there? Astronauts are almost addicted to space missions. Most say it was the most memorable moment in their lives. If they are fit enough to go back into space, most will stop at nothing to make it happen. So what is so amazing about space? Aliens. In the last sequence phase of a star, they grow several hundred times larger. So large that any planet near a giant red star will be…

we can see with our naked eyes on earth are almost fixed stars like our sun, it’s absolutely impossible for life to exist there. Thus in order to search for second earth, the first thing to do is detecting Earth-sized and smaller planets in the habitable zone of stars. NASA’s Kepler Mission aims at this goal using the powerful telescope Kepler. Kepler is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size…

When astronomers discover life in the universe, it would not be surprising if they do not look identical to ones from the Hollywood universe. In conclusion, humans have so much more to discover about the universe, so it is possible that there are habitable planets that can support life. The likelihood that life only evolved on Earth is really small, and astronomers discover new planets on a nearly daily basis. Lastly, when humans discover life, the organisms may not be similar ones depicted by…