[SunkenCiv]

Even as of last February, NASA's Kepler spacecraft had identified 1,235 exoplanet candidates (yellow and dark-blue dots), far more than the count of transiting exoplanets known prior to the mission (lighter violet dots). Click on the image for a larger version. Planet diameters are plotted vertically, orbital periods are plotted horizontally; these early discoveries orbit closer to their stars than Earth orbits the Sun. (The Jupiter, Neptune, and Earth illustrations at right are not to scale with each other.) [NASA / Wendy Stenzel]

[frogjerk]

Even as of last February, NASA's Kepler spacecraft had identified 1,235 exoplanet candidates (yellow and dark-blue dots), far more than the count of transiting exoplanets known prior to the mission (lighter violet dots). Click on the image for a larger version. Planet diameters are plotted vertically, orbital periods are plotted horizontally; these early discoveries orbit closer to their stars than Earth orbits the Sun. (The Jupiter, Neptune, and Earth illustrations at right are not to scale with each other.) [NASA / Wendy Stenzel]

And thanks to Obama we can only HOPE to travel to the stars or even the other planets one day.