Kepler and the Carnival

Congrats to everyone associated with the Kepler mission! It launched last night right on time, and was a very exciting event. Twitter was ablaze with tweets, comments, exclamations, kudos, questions, and just plain ol' excitement. The Kepler spacecraft is now a solar satellite, slowly moving away from Earth, getting ready to start looking for planets around other stars. It's a new era in astronomy, and that's no exaggeration. And if that doesn't sate your appetite for space and astronomy, Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog is hosting the 93rd Carnival of Space, too. I just found out Emily is on Twitter as well, so follow her to keep up with what's new in planetary science.