Project Blue, a private initiative to put a small telescope into orbit to look at our neighboring star Alpha Centauri, will be taking questions via Twitter today (Dec. 14) between 2 and 3 p.m. EDT (1900 and 2000 GMT) about the quest to find a potentially habitable planet around that star.
Space.com will field questions for the project team, which is currently running a crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter to begin the telescope design. You can search #SDCAsksPB, or look at the widget below, to follow the questions and answers. You can also tweet questions for the team using that hashtag.
Project Blue hopes to set eyes on a “pale blue dot” around Alpha Centauri — the binary star system just 4.4 light-years from Earth. The two stars make the system more challenging to image directly, but because it’s so close, a smaller, less expensive space telescope can see it. After it’s constructed, the refrigerator-size telescope would be in space between 2019 and 2022 collecting data. Read more about Project Blue here.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook and Google+ . Original article on Space.com .
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