Rob Beschizza
Gear

French Space Telescope to Hunt Planets

French space agency CNES will throw a new satellite into orbit later today from a Khazak spaceport, promising to put a new eye on more than 120,000 stars suspected of having planetary systems. “Corot will monitor the brightness of stars, looking for the slight drop in light caused by the transit of a planet. This […]

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French space agency CNES will throw a new satellite into orbit later today from a Khazak spaceport, promising to put a new eye on more than 120,000 stars suspected of having planetary systems.

"Corot will monitor the brightness of stars, looking for the slight drop in light caused by the transit of a planet. This is a rare event - it relies on the chance alignment of the star and the planet with Earth. As a consequence, Corot must keep an eye on more than 100,000 stars."

The first such telescope crafted from scratch to observe Earth-like worlds, Corot will start returning data almost immediately after it settles into a 500-mile high orbit and begins a 28-month scan of the heavens. "Earth-like worlds," however, means "ones that are made of rock," not necessarily close analogs to our own home planet.

Space telescope to hunt planets [BBC]