* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Kepler mission

Blobrana · L

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet

NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
The discovery of this planet, called an exoplanet, is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010.
Read more

Blobrana · L

International Team Of Astronomers To Discuss Kepler Findings

The Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC) at Aarhus University in Denmark will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 11 a.m. EDT to discuss the latest discoveries about stars and their structures using data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Nasa probe finds hundreds of new planets

Hundreds of new planets have been discovered by Nasa's new space probe, sparking new hope of life outside our solar system.
Up to 140 of the newly-found planets are similar in size to Earth, scientists have said.
The Kepler probe - which constantly monitors more than 150,000 stars for tell-tale signs of planets orbiting them - also may have found five new solar systems, Nasa said.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Do astronomers have the right to keep their findings secret?

The Kepler mission is a NASA program designed to find other possible Earth-like planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. The team involved have painstakingly scoured a patch of space for the tiniest signs of small planets (sometimes called Goldilocks planetsnot too close, and not too far from a star), and were due to release their findings yesterday, June 15thbut, reports the New York Times, have not.
Read more

Blobrana · L

Title: Characteristics of Kepler Planetary Candidates Based on the First Data Set: The Majority are Found to be Neptune-Size and Smaller
Authors: William J. Borucki, for the Kepler Team

Read more (3.31mb, PDF)

Blobrana · L

These are just candidates, so there is no indication of the estimated temperature on the exoplanets, (Teff just the total effective temperature and there are still many unknowns such as mass and atmosphere etc to say).
The appendix column heading are just stellar parameters of the observation.

KOI - Kepler Object of Interest
KIC - Kepler Input Catalogue
Kp - Apparent magnitude
R*(sun) - Orbital semimajor axis
Pp(Jupiter) - Jupiter radius
BJD - Barycentric Julian Date
log g - Surface gravity
Teff - Surface temperature

-- Edited by Blobrana on Thursday 17th of June 2010 11:09:14 AM

heich1 · New

Sorry to ask the same question in a different way. Have NASA given any indication of the estimated temperature on the exoplanets they have released? Also in the appendix of "Characteristics of Kepler Planetary Candidates on the First Data Set" there are column heading which I do not understand. They are KOI, KIC, Kp,
Pp(Jupiter), Epoch BJD-2454900, Teff(K), log(g), and R*(Sun). I would be much obliged if you would define them.

Blobrana · L

NASA's Kepler telescope has identified more than 700 so-called extrasolar planets, which obit around stars other than the sun.

In only its first 43 days of operation, NASA's Kepler orbiting telescope has identified 706 potential planets circling other stars, the agency said Tuesday.
Although some are likely to be false positives that will be weeded out by further observation, the announcement could double the known number of so-called extrasolar planets, a figure that now stands at 461.
Read more

Blobrana · L

NASA Releases Kepler Data On Potential Extrasolar Planets

NASA's Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars. These stars are being monitored for subtle brightness changes as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system.
The 28-member Kepler science team also is using ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope to perform follow-up observations on a specific set of 400 objects of interest. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations will determine which of the candidates can be identified as planets. That data will be released to the scientific community in February 2011.
Source

To see the science data, visit: http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler