Washington, Oct. 21 -- : Three decades after Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan suggested that Voyager 1 snap Earth's picture from billions of miles away -- resulting in the iconic Pale Blue Dot photograph -- two astronomers now offer another unique cosmic perspective that some exoplanets have a direct line of sight to observe Earth's biological qualities from far, far away.
Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute; and Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University, have identified 1,004 main-sequence stars (similar to our Sun) that might contain Earth-like planets in their own habitable zones -- all within about 300 light-years of Earth -- and w...