SkyTalk: LeBeau Looks For Life Out There

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 5, 2010) - For as long as humans have inhabited the Earth, society has questioned the possibility of extraterrestrial life. And we're still at it.  

NASA's Kepler space telescope mission, launched last year, has been designed to survey our zone of the Milky Way galaxy to discover how many stars have planets of the same size and atmosphere of the Earth. 

For this month's SkyTalk, University of Kentucky physics and astronomy professor Raymond LeBeau will speak on the Kepler mission in a lecture titled "A Galaxy of Giant Planets" at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 11, in the Chemistry-Physics Building, Room 153. 

"For most of our history, the only planets we knew were those in our solar system," explained LeBeau. "Now, hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, or exoplanets, have been detected, and the Kepler mission promises the discovery of possibly thousands more." 

While there is clear proof of gas giants, hot-super-Earths and ice giants in our galaxy, the Kepler mission's challenge is to find inhabitable planets, where liquid water and possibly life might exist.

"Cataloguing these planets will allow us to better understand the formation of the solar system and the types of planets that exist in our galaxy, including other Earth-like planets," said LeBeau. "The discovery exoplanets is one of the exciting frontiers of astronomy." 

LeBeau will discuss how these planets are detected, how we use the knowledge of planets in our solar system to understand those orbiting other stars and the prospects for future discoveries. 

"Right now, exoplanets are classified in terms like 'Hot Jupiters,' 'Cold Neptunes' and 'Super-Earths,'" explained LeBeau. "We will talk about what these terms mean and how we can (and cannot) relate what we know about our local planets to planets many light-years distant."

After LeBeau's 45-minute talk, participants are invited to cross the street to the MacAdam Student Observatory, located on top of UK parking structure number two where everyone will have a chance to look through the 20-inch observatory telescope.

The Kentucky SkyTalk series is presented by the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy and the MacAdam Student Observatory. Held every second Thursday of the month, the talks are free and open to the public. Middle and high school students are particularly encouraged to attend. 
 
For more information, contact observatory director Tim Knauer at TimKnauer@uky.edu or (859) 257-7147.