Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Wonders of the Universe



Glen spoke to us about the multitude of universes in the sky and the earth’s quest to find planets capable of supporting life.

He explained how earth telescopes are able to pick up large planets moving around stars and how from there an effort is being made to locate smaller planets the right size and distance from the star to allow life. To narrow this down they are looking at stars (sun’s) approx the size of earth’s sun. This narrowed the search down to 300 and from this they are concentrating on one particular star.
For ten years NASA and associated agencies have been developing a new telescope that detects the wabble of smaller planets. Planet Quest hopes to have this up and running by 2015 and it is hoped it will be the first telescope to detect habitable planets and is expected to monitor a couple of hundred stars over 15 years. There is also new breed of telescope that blocks out the sun and allows scientist to look at planets and objects closest to the sun.

Glen’s talk covered a great deal about the galaxy and the search for life on other planets and everyone enjoyed the evening.

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