I confess to being a nature porn junkie, especially when it comes to those extraordinary BBC series Planet Earth, The Blue Planet and the upcoming Frozen Planet, so I was utterly captivated by this tribute to Sir David Attenborough.

We don't know if there's anything for us to stand on yet, but the temperature appears to be a delightful 72 degrees, there's light similar to that of our sun, and the year is a little longer than ours. Pack your bags for Kepler-22b, I think we've nearly milked this planet for all it's worth:

At 2.4 times wider than Earth, the composition of Kepler-22b is a puzzle. It could be rocky, a “super-Earth” much like our planet but bigger. It might also be a water world covered with deep oceans, said Dimitar Sasselov, a Kepler scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Or it could be gaseous like Neptune or Uranus.

Determining the planet’s composition rests in part on measuring its mass — how heavy it is. The Kepler telescope is unable to make this measurement, but ground-based telescopes can by watching the planet tugging on its star. Telescopes in Hawaii and elsewhere will attempt these measurements when the star comes into view next summer, Borucki said.

Everyone loves those Planet Earth shows, since they're exceptionally shot and capture moments in nature that otherwise would remain unseen, and the latest series Frozen Planet is probably no exception, especially if you like penguins and polar bears. However, when Frozen Planet airs in America on the Discovery Channel in early 2012, it will be one episode shorter than the version shown on the BBC. Why? Because climate change is controversial:

The final episode of Frozen Planet — the popular new series from the creators of Planet Earth — addresses the impending threat of climate change on the Earth's poles. In the episode, which will air on BBC One on December 7th, narrator David Attenborough is expected to claim that the Arctic could be completely devoid of ice by 2020.

But in the US, the episode will not air, for fear of the reaction it might draw from America's climate change skeptics. In fact, as of mid-November, the BBC had sold the documentary series to over 30 foreign networks, and a third of them had opted out of the controversial final episode.

Maybe Attenborough's view of the threat of global climate change is offbase, maybe we'll be fine without changing our behavior one bit, but is the very idea so offensive that the series needs to be shortened? That seems ridiculous, to say the least.

• NASA/JPL-Caltech

Alan Fischer of the Planetary Science Institute fills us in on the local connection to the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover, which launched on Saturday:

With the Mars Science Laboratory speeding through space on its way to an expected August 2012 arrival at our neighboring planet, Planetary Science Institute researchers R. Aileen Yingst and David Vaniman are looking forward to seeing what the rover’s cameras and spectrometers will show.

During its planned lengthy surface mission, the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity will assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, a habitable environment able to support microbial life.

Yingst, a Senior Scientist at PSI, is Deputy Principal Investigator on MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) and a Co-Investigator on MARDI (Mars Descent Imager) and MastCam (Mast Camera).

“Curiosity is the first rover designed to be both field geologist and portable laboratory,” Yingst said. “It has many of the characteristics of other rovers, but it also has instruments that will allow it to look for evidence of carbon compounds in samples. This is something that your typical field geologist could only do in the lab.”

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

German video artist Michael Konig created this time-lapse video from footage taken from the International Space Station over a three month period, and while I don't always have the greatest opinion of this particular planet, maybe it just takes being hundreds of miles above it to see the beauty.

[The Awl]

• JOHN DE DIOS
• Researchers at Biosphere 2 are looking into the idea of a Model City. The idea is to make the 40-acre campus into a sustainable, solar-powered and energy-efficient example for municipalities to follow. Technologies for solar-powered grids and storage are being tested along with water-harvesting techniques. Audio and Slideshow after the jump.

Like a city out of science fiction, Biosphere 2’s spaceship-like campus is a testing site for new solar technology.

In the coming months, photovoltaic panels for collecting solar energy will line the hills surrounding Biosphere 2 like a ring of power-generating armor. This is just part of a project led by Nathan Allen, sustainability coordinator and staff scientist, to turn the campus into an energy efficient model for cities.

Armageddon was narrowly averted yesterday when a giant asteroid skimmed past the planet. The UA News Service has details on the Tucson connection:

Discovered by a University of Arizona astronomer six years ago, a city-block-sized space rock will race past the Earth closer than the moon in what will be the closest encounter of an object of this size in more than 60 years.

When an asteroid the size of a city block zips past the Earth about 29,000 miles per hour on Nov. 8, it will seem like an encounter with an old acquaintance to Univeristy of Arizona astronomer Robert McMillan.

Six years ago, McMillan was taking images of the night sky with an 83-year-old telescope on Kitt Peak searching for asteroids, chunks of rock that weren't swept up into one of the nascent planets during the formation of our solar system and have traveled around the sun ever since. That is how he discovered 2005 YU55.

"2005 YU55 is one of the potentially hazardous asteroids that make close approaches from time to time because their orbits either approach or intersect the orbit of the Earth," said McMillan, who is an associate
research scientist with the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory with a joint appointment in the UA's Steward Observatory.

Tonight's Political Roundtable: Paton and McLeod debate redistricting, the Pearce recall and the mayor's race. Plus, predictions in the Ward 4 race between Councilwoman Shirley Scott and GOP challenger Tyler Vogt.

Adam Block, astrophotographer at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter in Tucson Ariz., has been enamored by the night sky since he received his first telescope at the age of 7. Block talks about his love for astrophotography and how his curiosity of the cosmos grew from a hobby, into a profession.