Kepler space telescope - the search for another earth

I find this inspiring. If there are other earth-like planets out there the Kepler space telescope will be able to find them. Based on the type of star and orbit scientists can determine if the planet exists in what is called a habital zone - and likely to be an earth-like planet. Kepler will watch a cluster of around 100,000 stars for a period of 3.5 years to generate some statistically significant distributions.

from the article:

Boss said one day "we'll be able to stand outside ... and say 'Hey kids, look out there see that star? That one has an Earth".

What will you think if many are discovered? what if none are discovered?

I initially thought the satellite would have ability to detect analyze light for the presence of oxygen or other earth-like signature, but apparently that is not the case. The planets discovered are just good candidates. Here are Kepler FAQs.

Earth and moon from a distance

Whoa. I was looking at images on the the Astronomy Picture of the Day's website over the past month or so (I used to check this almost daily but haven't been checking as closely recently), and I came upon this excellent series of photos from a probe from a distance of around 31 million miles looking back at the earth and moon.

The image apparently contains both visable and infrared data, but it's striking how small the earth and orbit of the moon look from this perspective. Very cool. I think we're looking at mostly Africa and the Atlantic ocean as they rotate in the images.

Earth at Night

See these stunning NASA images of the earth a night. Click on areas of the map to zoom in. The first link provided has some extremely high resolution images if you want to try them.