Bringing the Universe to Earth

Earlier this year the European Space Agency launched two missions to potentially make ground breaking observations in the infrared and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Planck

The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to map and create new images of the lunar surface.


This latest image shows the Apollo 12 lunar landing site.

As the ESA Herschel mission cools down and begins operation, so the Nasa Spitzer telescope is slowly warming up.

Spitzer exhausted its supply of cryogenic materials earlier this year and the instruments are slowly being warmed by the heat of the telescope. Instead of observing the universe at a few Kelvin the spacecraft is now returning images at a relatively warm 30 Kelvin.

More details at NASA

At a press conference today Kepler mission scientists presented observations on the detection of an atmosphere of a known exoplanet.

The planet, HAT-P-7, is in the constellation of Cygnus and lies about 1000 light years away. The observed light curve, shown below, is the highest resolution exoplanet light curve obtained and indicates that the performance of Kepler is such that it should be able to observe Earth sized planets - if they exist.

The NASA Kepler mission, launched in early March, is designed to search for Earth sized planets around nearby stellar systems. Successful commissioning of the spacecraft by mid-May saw the start of the search with early results anticipated to reveal observations of Jupiter sized planets.

Further, results were not expected until early next year. So it was surprising, therefore, for NASA to announce a press conference on Kepler findings for Thursday 6 August. Undoubtedly such an announcement opens a multitude of possibilities on what Kepler has seen.