CoRoT finding lots of planets

CoRoT is an ESA space telescope launched 10 months ago, they announced their first planet find in May thats all we know so far, ESA will publish full results next year but theres a very interesting update on their site

It is now clear that CoRoT will instigate a breakthrough in both of the fields of science that it applies to.

This is written in bold on their page, pretty ballsy they must have something good. It goes on to say

CoRoT is discovering exo-planets at a rate only set by the available resources to follow up the detections

This is quite phenomenal. Theyre discovering more planet candidates than they can assign people to follow up and check. Which means theyre discovering a shedload. Roll on 2008 for the results


you can see the update here. smsc.cnes.fr...


[edit on 7-11-2007 by yeti101]

I know this is amazing. When you think they have found something like a hundred planets so far outside of our solar system, then think that they are only lookin at stars close to us and there are millions of stars in our galaxy, then millions of galaxies.


Its not a matter of if we are alone, its when we will find out that we are not alone. Kind of like when we discovered that we wernt the center of the universe... too bad i wont be around for that.... or will I....

They obviously know where to look.

That is outstanding. I'm looking forward to the publication of the results.

And not only do they know where to look, but they know what to look for. Also, in January 2009 we should see the launch of the Kepler Space Observatory, which is NASA's effort for an orbiting observatory ousting original orbs. In other words, it too will be looking for extrasolar planets.

Bonus points for alliteration, though? Please?

reply to post by cmdrkeenkid


And the Allen Array should be going great guns by now. It seems that we are putting our ears and eyes to the stars as never before. Almost as if we were sure there was to be a big payoff for the effort. When you consider all the planned and ongoing Moon and Mars missions of one sort and another, it makes one think of a gold rush.

(But really, kid, boorish begging begets bad behavior.)

Looks like we will get the first results December 10th - should be interesting although the really good stuff will come when the data from the long 150 day run has been analysed

You know I wish they would publicize some of this on some type of channel, or even main stream news station (CNN, Fox or something don't care which but, Something!)
It's really sad when I have to stumble upon something that is interesting to say the least, and yet nothing of the sort has been put out for the rest of the public to know about. It's always like finding a needle in a Haystack =/, though Hope to hear the results. Especially the analyzed ones.

Hi Eliza

CoRoT launch was live on bbc and the first announcement of a planet was on all the news sites.

This time theyre not giving any specific info so its not really news worthy to mainstream media. When they release their first paper in december it will be covered for sure.