First Photos from NASA'S Kepler

aol.com NASA'S spacecraft, Kepler, sent out to find Earth-like planets while circling distant, alien stars, has sent back it's first photos. It is estimated that in these first views there around 14 million of them staring back at us. How exciting this is!!!!!! The craft was launched last month and we are already getting photos, how cool is technology! Check out the photos at the link above.

[edit on 4/17/2009 by PammyK]

reply to post by PammyK

Yes, this image is way cool, and gives a sense of the scientific challenge the Kepler team is facing.

I'd suggest pointing people straight to the project site at kepler.nasa.gov....

Wouldn't it be great if we found a planet where visitors to Earth come from, and they had just been waiting for us to find them before reveling to us? Oh, to dream!!!!!!

[edit on 4/17/2009 by PammyK]

I think until we are federation or organization ready to join, which may be 800 years away even, their exact locations are sensitive information and likely to be told as something else. But its amazing that they pointed in the direction so many are told some of our visitors come from, Lyrae, and others there. Adding to this list should be alpha centauri and rigel systems.

A good way to hunt is to look back at Earth and
get the optical and radio signatures of Earth.

Then do a scan of all those stars and waa la you
have a choice of planets to discover.

reply to post by PammyK


What Kepler will do for us (with higher confidence from every test it passes), is to give us a very good statistical estimate of how common Earth-like planets in the habitable zone (not too hot or too cold) actually are in this part of the galaxy. This - and the follow-up work if they find some especially close ones - is very exciting. It means we'll pretty much have nailed one of the terms in the Drake equation, but more importantly, it will give us a list of targets to study more carefully for evidence of life.

That's a lot to hope for. And if the Kepler evidence is that such habitable terrestrial planets are reasonably common, and it verified by other instruments, I think you'll see a change in the scientific attitude toward the Fermi paradox.

It's going to take 3+ years, so we'll have to be patient.

reply to post by disownedsky


hi , yes its very exciting but if the kepler results are positive it makes the fermi paradox even stranger. It may be that most planets in the HZ are just like venus or mars. Complex life may still be rare even if planets the same size/orbit arn't.

personally i think complex life could still be common but tech intelligence could stil be very rare. Hopefully there are planets out there like earth they just wont have any intelligent beings there.



[edit on 20-4-2009 by yeti101]

reply to post by yeti101


You may be right, but planets right in the sweet spot of the HZ would have a better chance of being continuously habitable for a long time. Both Mars and Venus were probably habitable in their early history, and it's not certain that they are not still home to few microbes.

Kepler's results won't be a final answer, but it could give us some good planets to study in the future. Eventually, we should be able to observe an atmospheric spectrum of one of these planets. That could be all we need to determine that there is life there.

I am quite excited about the Kepler mission. Although I know anything found that is truly amazing will be kept under wraps and we will only get rumors as opposed to results.

However the breath taking images that NASA does provide are a bitter sweet compromise I guess.

I hope there's some massive error and we all get to see what comes up on the monitors at NASA when these things are fresh off the beam.

~Keeper

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
I am quite excited about the Kepler mission. Although I know anything found that is truly amazing will be kept under wraps and we will only get rumors as opposed to results.

However the breath taking images that NASA does provide are a bitter sweet compromise I guess.

I hope there's some massive error and we all get to see what comes up on the monitors at NASA when these things are fresh off the beam.

~Keeper

Are you seriously claiming that NASA will suppress data from this mission?

First, very few of the scientists involved with the mission and the data analysis are actually NASA employees. They are mostly academics, grad students, and staff of non-profit organizations. I've worked with scientists like these, and they are not good soldiers. If you order them to shut up and forget, they won't.

Second, Kepler is a photometry mission, not an imaging mission. It will detect planets by very subtle variations in the brightness of stars that will take a lot of time and careful analysis. Only the science team will be able to determine whether there is a detection, and the science team is very highly motivated to make these detections.

Third, why? Why wold NASA want to suppress any findings from this mission?