So, I was gone last week

I'm on the science team for NASA's Kepler Mission. The point of the mission is to detect the transits (eclipses) of planets as they pass in front of their parent stars, in other solar systems. Kepler can see that. We should be able to find planets smaller than Earth. Kepler will stare at one patch of sky for at least 3 1/2 years, to monitor around 100,000 stars. We should be able to find Earth-sized planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like stars. Pretty amazing. I was down at Cape Canaveral / Cocoa Beach for team meetings and the launch, which was last Friday night. I also managed to take in a spring training game in Orlando. We were about 6 miles from the launch site, but here is a close-up image from NASA:

The mission is the brainchild of NASA Ames scientist Bill Borucki, who wrote his first paper about a space-based transit monitoring telescope in 1984. Yes, everything important from that decade really did happen in 1984. So this was a 25-year journey for Bill. After the launch there was a line of people waiting to get their picture taken with him. Actually, I was at the front of said line, but then others thought it was a good idea too. Note our limited edition "Kepler Science Team" hats. The takeaway message from the trip is that I owe Katie big-time!!! It was the longest I'd been away from Finn, and that was hard.