NASA Hosting Web Chat about the Quest for New Planets

NASA invites the public to join an online chat with a Kepler Mission team member who will answer your questions about exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, and a new planet finding on Monday, Jan. 10, at 12:30 p.m. PST live from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Seattle.
Kepler News and Features

Kepler Launch!

Image by Astro Guy
Kepler, a NASA mission to search for Earth-like planets, was successfully launched at 10:49:57.465 p.m. EST on March 6, 2009.

The Kepler instrument is a 1 metre aperture telescope that will monitor the brightness of over 100 000 stars continuously for at least 3.5 years. The science team is looking for repeated drops in the brightness of a star caused by an Earth-like planet transit.

I’ve identified some of the stars visible (down to 7th magnitude!). tau Boo is known to host a Jupiter-like planet.