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Ephemeris: 03/27/2026 – Finding life out there

March 27, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, March 27th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 31 minutes, setting at 8:04, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:30. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 5:39 tomorrow morning.

I have often been asked what I thought about life existing in the universe… besides the Earth of course. My answer is yes, I think there is life out there in the universe. There are more galaxies, stars and planets than we can possibly count, though when looking at exoplanets, we’re not finding much in the way of habitable planets. We have one example of life: the Earth and that’s what we look for. Our detection methods are too crude to be able to detect anything as small as the earth unless it’s orbiting a small red dwarf star. We seem to find a lot of large planets, that orbit extremely close to their stars because our detection methods depend on what they do to either block the light of a star or affect it gravitationally. The earth is almost too small to do either.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The Kepler-62 stellar system, one of thousands of exoplanetary systems found in the last 31 years, These planets were discovered by the transit method, by passing in front of their star. The star itself is smaller and somewhat dimmer than the Sun, so the habitable zone is closer in. The planets are designated by lower case letters in order of their discovery. The time between transits determines their orbital distance, and the amount they decrease the star's light, their size. The two planets in the habitable zone, e and f, are considered super-earth's. They may or may not be rocky, depending on their density, which is related to their mass, which the transit method doesn't detect.
The Kepler-62 stellar system, one of thousands of exoplanetary systems found in the last 31 years, These planets were discovered by the transit method, by passing in front of their star. The star itself is smaller and somewhat dimmer than the Sun, so the habitable zone is closer in. The planets are designated by lower case letters in order of their discovery. The time between transits determines their orbital distance, and the amount they decrease the star’s light, their size. The two planets in the habitable zone, e and f, are considered super-earth’s. They may or may not be rocky, depending on their density, which is related to their mass, which the transit method doesn’t detect. Credit: JPL/NASA.
Categories: Ephemeris Program, Life in the universe Tags: ,