NASA’s new planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the changing phases and atmosphere of a planet a thousand light years away.

An artists concept of an exoplanet orbiting close to its sun. Image credit: NASA August 6, 2009: NASA’s new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope’s extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery will be published Friday in the journal Science.

Launched March 6, 2009, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm “Goldilocks zone” where there could be water. It will do this by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars, which occur when orbiting planets transit, or cross in front of, the stars. [...]

 

Source: Nasa Science – click here for full article