Corot, the planet-hunting satellite, has been successfully launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It will seek out Earth-like planets outside our solar system and explore the interior of stars. Corot stands for convection, rotation and planetary transits.It is the first spacecraft able to detect planets of a similar size as Earth, but orbiting different stars, not the Sun. Most of these so-called "exo-planets" discovered so far have been gas giants like Jupiter. Corot carries a telescope that allows it to find smaller rocky planets, only a few times the size of Earth.It will examine the same stretch of sky for 150 days and study about 10,000 stars at a time. The tiny variations in light emitted by the stars will alert it to the exo-planets.Scientists say Corot will not be able to answer the question of whether there is extra-terrestrial life. I picked up on this news as it contained the country Kazakhstan :) and a space ship vaugly reminisent of Borat in the way it sounds.

I had a busy couple of days at work but I should be off on Hogmanay evening from 1700 and go back to work 1700 New years night, I dont have anything planned and the forecast doesnt look great but it will be nice to lay in on New years day.