New telescopic camera is watching the stars and planets that are eight billion light years away - maybe in the end, we will find the living and find out that you are not alone in space.

"Space... You just won't believe how gorgeous it is too big" - so wrote Douglas Adams, author of "the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", which spent most of their time looking at the stars. "You may think that the road to the chemist is a very long way, but it's just peanuts to space."

To reduce the distance can help a new telescope at Cerro Tololo, inter-American Observatory in Chile. 570-megapixel device weighs 5.4 tons, has a size SmartCar'a. He can see the stars and planets at a distance of up to eight billion light years.

Two recent discoveries show the enormous potential of this telescope. This week, scientists have discovered extrasolar planets (planets outside the Solar system) in the so-called "habitable zone" around the star Tau Ceti, 12 light-years. In other Chilean Observatory at La Silla, found exoplanet that orbits around one of the three stars in the alpha Centauri, which is the nearest neighbor of our Sun. He is only four light-years or about 40trillion kilometers.

But not given the long distances to find exoplanets, which, relatively speaking, are under our noses, not so simple. Astronomers believe that they are difficult to detect because they are much weaker than the stars, they are in orbits in complex systems big stars such as alpha Centauri, and can masquerade as tiny planet. In fact, the first exoplanet (named PSR B1257 +12 V) officially opened only 20 years ago. Most of them were found by the method of search of stars through its gravitational attraction. Today it is possible to do with a telescope.

Thanks to the advances in technology have already identified more than 850 planets and thousands of potential is studied. This gives the ability to find planets on which there is life in any form.

Best hope for finding exoplanets, like Earth, is the spacecraft NASA Kepler"that watches the stars, with dull ambles because of planets that cross their path.

"Discovery "of Kepler show that at least a third part of the stars have planets like Earth," said William Borucki, chief scientist at Ames Research center NASA. "These planets are of the greatest interest for researchers, poet subject to detailed analysis."

New telescopic camera allows you to make the opening of new cosmic bodies that are both in the vicinity and at very great distances. And this is not their only function. She has another mission, which has a much grandest consequences. "The universe is growing very quickly. Issledovaniya using the new camera will allow us to learn about our future in space of the Universe," says project Manager Joshua Frieman.