Blue Planets, Black Holes
A decade ago, all the planets we knew were in our own solar system. Today we know of over a hundred large planets surrounding other stars. Astronomers are now in hot pursuit of ever smaller planets, with the ultimate goal of finding earth-like planets that could potentially support life. How do astronomers detect these distant, faint objects, and what missions are planned in the future to find such earth analogues? The search for terrestrial planets is a central theme of the Exploration Initiative at NASA.
Opposite in every way from such blue planets are black holes. Like extra-solar planets, the first hard evidence for black holes is barely a decade old. These discontinuities in space-time are known now to be ubiquitous, inhabiting the centers of galaxies in the distant universe, and serving as the end of the road for massive stars. Current progress and future missions on black holes will be discussed.
Finally, courtesy of the three Great Observatories currently in orbit, we will have a short tour of our known universe, starting from 300,000 years after the beginning of time, proceeding through the most distant, early galaxies, then through our galaxy, and finally into our own home solar system, 13.7 billion years later.