A recent story that’s stillplanet scape – space art making waves is the detection of Kepler 186f, a planet the size of Earth and in the so called “habitable zone” of its host star. It would seem K186f is then very much like Earth but that’s not exactly true. The “habitable zone” is defined as the region around a star where liquid water can exist (the bedrock of life as we know it). For a star like our sun, the Earth is in this “goldilocks region,” not too hot, not too cold. But K186f’s sun is a lot cooler than ours, so it’s much closer in! The host star, Kepler 186 is an M1 star, a cool star around 3800 Kelvin, compared to our sun’s 6000 Kelvin temperature. Continue reading Earth-sized and in its habitable zone