Europe is launching a space telescope on Tuesday to further study distant planets that have already been discovered. The BBC reports: The telescope will ride to orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. Lift-off is scheduled for 05:54 local time (08:54 GMT). Cheops (short for Characterizing ExOPlanet Satellite) is a joint endeavor of 11 member states of the European Space Agency (ESA), with Switzerland in the lead.

The University of Bern, together with the University of Geneva, has provided a powerful photometer for the telescope. The instrument will measure the tiny changes in light when a world passes in front of its host star. This event, referred to as a transit, will betray a precise diameter for the planet because the changes in light are proportional to the surface of the world. When that information is combined with data about the mass of the object – obtained through other means – it will be possible for scientists to deduce a density. […] The mission has been given a list of 400-500 targets to look at over the next 3.5 years. Most of these worlds will be in the size range between Earth and Neptune, sometimes called “super Earths.” From all the exoplanet surveys conducted to date, this grouping would seem to dominate the statistics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Europe’s Cheops Telescope Will Profile Distant Planets