Earth as seen from space, taken during Apollo 8 operation, showing "blue" Earth. (Image via: New Atlas)

Project Blue: Looking for an Inhabitable Planet

With global warming, human demands new place to live. Hence, the group of astronomers is building a space telescope to “see the nearest inhabitable, blue planet” in our solar system. This project is titled “Project Blue”, blue as in the blue atmosphere of Earth that they hope to find over a planet.

This project is spearheaded by BoldlyGo Institute, founded on the idea of Dr. Jon Morse, a former scientist at NASA and science advisor for White House. “Project Blue” relies on crowdfunding and donor from generous institution who has the same goal in minds. However, to find other inhabitable planet was not a new idea at all.

It all began in 1995, when Swiss astronomers found 51 Pegasi b, an exoplanet revolving around our Sun. Despite its barren, uninhabitable feature, this finding sparked inspiration for the present astronomers to find other planets, but with inhabitable characteristics as our Earth. Since then, about 4,000 exoplanets have been spotted within our reach.

However, of course, they found drawbacks when spotting these exoplanets. Since it is known that planets cannot generate their own light but reflect light from other stars, astronomers would find it hard to find a planet with the same size as our Earth. As matter of fact, 51 Pegasi b has the same size as Jupiter. Therefore, planet as small as Earth, would be seen only as a dim.

In order to catch the dim light from smaller exoplanets, “Project Blue” uses coronagraph. Coronagraph, invented by French astronomer Bernard Lyot, blocks any brighter light from entering the lens of the device, but instead, it allows dimmer lights of its surroundings to enter the coronagraph.

While finding an inhabitable planet like Earth is a long journey, with this project in mind, we can map the galaxies and show it to the future generations to their perusal.

Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/seeing-blue-the-hunt-for-earths-sister/