APOD 1.4

The picture "CoRoT Satellite Discovers Rocky Planet" caught my eye the moment I saw it for several reasons. The picture itself is extremely vibrant, with a blinding array of orange and yellows contrasting with the black space. The picture of the planet in the foreground and the star in the background seems unreal like something from a Star Trek movie, which in fact it is, since it is just an artist's depiction. The article itself was also quite interesting, which tells of a planet that the CoRoT satellite discovered, which has been dubbed CoRoT-7b. This planet is roughly the size of our Earth with a nearby 'home star' akin to our own Sun. However this star is much too close to the CoRoT-7b, making life for humans on the planet impossible, not even taking into account the fact that the planet is 500 light years away. Also while following the links included in the article, I learned that CoRoT actually stands for COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits and is a program led by the French Space Agency in association with the European Space Agency. The goal of this program is to twofold; first to locate new extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, and to perform asteroseismology. This most recent planet which has been discovered through the program, CoRoT-7b is unique in that it is the first rocky exoplanet that has been found.