Habitable Zone

In astronomy the habitable zone is the

distances from a star to an earthlike
planet that can contain liquid on its
surface. The habitable zone is the
intersection of regions that can hold life;
one within a planetary system and a
galaxy. Planets and moons are the
habitable and capable to hold life
Europa one of Jupiter’s moons has been
rumored that it has an ocean, and Titan
a moon of Saturn is carbon copy of Earth
which it may have started before
humans.
The habitable zone is not to be confused
with the planetary habitability zone.
While planetary habitability deals with
planetary conditions required to
maintain carbon based life, and these
two factors that are not meant to be
interchanged.
Exoplanets
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a
planet outside our solar system. As of
February 7th 2011, astronomers have
announced confirmed detection of 529
exoplanets. There are at least 1,235
planet candidates awaiting confirmation
by more detailed investigations that
may be in the “Habitable Zone” in the
paragraph above.
Man exoplanets have been detected
through radial velocity observations and
other indirect methods rather than
actual imaging. Most are giant planets
through the resemble of Jupiter: this
partly reflects a sampling bias in that
more massive planets are easier to
observe with current technology.
Several relatively lightweight
exoplanets, only a few times more
massive earth, have also been detected
and projections suggest that these will
eventually be found to outnumber giant
planets.
You should know that a substantial
fraction of stars have planetary systems,
including at least 10% of our sun like
stars it follows that trillions of
exoplanets are in our galaxy alone with
no planets around it. There also exist
planets that orbit brown dwarfs and
floating planets that do not orbit any
parent body at all, though as a matter of
definition it is unclear if either of these
should be referred to the term “planet”.
Kepler Mission
The Kepler mission is to determine how
many earth like planets may exist in our
galactic neighborhood. Kepler will detect
planets indirectly, using the “transit"
method. A transit occurs each time a
planet crosses the line-of-sight between
the planets parent star that is orbiting
and the observer. When this happens,
the planet blocks some light from its
star, resulting periodic dimming. This
periodic signature is used to detect the
planet and to determine its size and
orbit.
The industrial partner for the hardware
is Ball Aerospace & Technologies corp.,
based in Boulder Colorado. The mission
is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Kepler will hunt planets
using Kepler will hunt for planets using a
specialized one-meter diameter
telescope called a photometer to
measure the small changes in
brightness caused by the transits.

Over a four year period, Kepler will

continuously view an amount of sky
about equal in area to two "scoops" of
the sky made with the Big Dipper
constellation. In comparison, the Hubble
Space Telescope can view only the
amount of sky equal to a grain of sand
held at arms length, and then only for
about a half-hour at a time. Kepler's
findings will tell scientists a lot about
how common Earthlike planets may be
in the galaxy - and the likelihood of
finding a planet near our own that could
support life.