Orbit 17 +++ Space and beyond
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Posts tagged Kepler
KEPLER MISSION: Space Telescope Finds its First Extrasolar Planets, NASA in 2010
Jan 7th
NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission is off to a precocious start. The first six weeks of observations recorded by the spacefaring telescope, combined with follow-up studies from the ground, have revealed five previously unknown extrasolar planets—one body roughly the size of Neptune and four low-density versions of Jupiter. All reside within roasting distance of their parent stars.
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The findings appear to reinforce hints from ground-based observations that stars have relatively few close-in planets with a mass between that of Saturn and Neptune, says Kepler scientist Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
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All four hot, Jupiter-like planets discovered by Kepler have densities lower than that predicted for such giant, gaseous planets. One of these bodies, Kepler-7b, has one of the lowest densities—0.17 grams per cubic centimeter—of any known extrasolar planet. (By comparison, Jupiter’s average density is 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter, slightly higher than that of water, but Jupiter lies much farther from the sun than does Kepler-7b from its star.)
Although Kepler began observations only in May 2009, its ability to find a variety of transiting planets has already lent considerable significance to something it did not detect: a planet less massive than Jupiter but considerably heavier than Neptune. (Saturn has about a third the mass of Jupiter.) In the standard model of planet formation, Sasselov notes, the recipe to make a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn requires that a rocky or icy core several times heavier than Earth must coalesce within the planet-forming disk around a young star.
NASA’s Kepler mission looks for new planets – just like Johannes wanted
Dec 26th
“…we must choose between two assumptions: either the souls which move the planets are the less active the farther the planet is removed from the sun, or there is only one moving soul in the center of all the orbits, that is the sun, which drives the planet the more vigorously the closer the planet is, but whose force is quasi-exhausted when acting on the outer planets because of the long distance and the weakening of the force which it entails.” (in ref. 1, p 261)
As the story goes, on Christmas night 2,000 years ago, wise men followed a star in the night sky to reach the baby Jesus. NASA-Ames is following the stars too, looking for life on other worlds, and astronomers have a new celestial tool to help them.
“If we’re going to be looking for planets, earth-like planets are the key,” Foothill College Astronomy Department Chair Andrew Fraknoi said.
Fraknoi has loved astronomy since childhood. He says NASA’s Kepler mission is one of the most exciting in quite some time.
“In the last 16 years, we’ve discovered over 400 planets going around other stars, but the methods so far that we have been using only allowed us to find big planets like Jupiter,” Fraknoi said.
Kepler is a telescope designed to find planets orbiting other stars by looking for a break in the star light as a planet moves in front of it.
The challenge now is to find planets that are half to twice the size of the earth in the habitable zone of their stars, where it is possible that water and even life might exist.