Our home planet, Earth, as captured by NASA Kepler Telescope, portrays the image as a cosmic lighthouse much like Darth Maul’s Star Wars lightsaber. The image was snapped from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope on Dec. 10, 2017, while NASA was adjusting the telescope’s view. NASA’s officials wrote, which got released on March 7, on the ninth anniversary of Kepler’s launch.
Captured on Dec. 10, 2017, after the spacecraft adjusted its telescope to a new field of view
The Earth shines so bright because Kepler’s light-sensing photometer is exquisitely sensitive. It is moreover designed to identify the tiny brightness dips sourced by exoplanets when they cross their host stars’ faces from Kepler’s perspective.
Kepler orbits the sun, a bit behind Earth. The spacecraft was about 94 million miles (151 million kilometers) from our planet when the newly released photo was taken, as confirmed by NASA.
In the final frontier, it is suggested that a new planet hunter will join Kepler, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). NASA’s TESS is scheduled to launch on April 16 and assigned to hunt for alien worlds circling stars in the sun’s neighborhood. As the name suggests, it will use the same planet-hunting method that Kepler employs.
