mathoda.com

The science of determining the nature of planets outside our solar system keeps improving. For example, scientists use the wobble a planet causes in its home star’s motion as it orbits to determine the type of planet itself.

Now comes news that a team of European astronomers has discovered 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra a planet similar to Earth. Roughly similar: about 50 percent bigger than Earth and about five times more massive. Still, it’s pretty small as planets go, and it’s the right distance from its sun (a red dwarf) to be within the “habitable zone” where surface water, a key ingredient for the creation of the kind of life we know about, could exist if other conditions are right.

http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&tab=wn&q=new+earthlike+planet&filter=0

Enter your location at this website, and you can see the stars above you (on your computer at least). http://www.wikisky.org/

Have you ever tried looking at a far away object, but had an annoyingly bright light source nearby? It helps to put your hand up, and block off the nearby light source or reflection. I think I first tried doing this at about age 5.

NASA’s latest telescope does something very similar, but on a more sophisticated level. The James Webb Space Telescope has an eight million-pixel infrared detector (that’s the telescope’s eye). In front of the detector there are 62,000 shutters measures 100 by 200 microns, or roughly the width of three to six human hairs, arranged in four identical grids in a layout of 171 rows by 365 columns. The shutters can close to help the detector only detect weaker sources of far away light.

For more, check out the NASA press release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jan/HQ_07014_Webb_microshutters.html