Kepler: The Big Reveal

A live Web feed of the speakers' slides will be available during the presentation by visiting www.showmaestro.com... .

[edit on 4-1-2010 by Deaf Alien]

By the way, the bright object in Lasco images is venus. It will disappear around the sun soon, and reappear on the other side.

Its not some ufo, or planet x, just good ole Venus making a pass in our view of the sun.

Funny people.. thinking its some GIANT nibiru about to burn our atmosphere or flip our poles. If or When that happens you will probably not be previleged enough to have that information.

Curious to see what NASA has to say. Soon.

This article states that they found 5 exoplanets.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Originally posted by DJM8507
This article states that they found 5 exoplanets.

www.washingtonpost.com...

I really hope the conference will give out a lot more than that

This is the great reveal???

the found 5 hot jupiters wel woooohooo

Reminds me of that announcement from last year where they made a same claim and whtat did we get...a SUPERNOVA REMENENT (sp?)



Nasa

[edit on 4-1-2010 by sunspot0]

I hope more info becomes available at the press conference. So far it looks like they have found 5 relatively large exoplanets, and a large unknown object hotter than the star it is orbiting!

Lets keep this thread alive so we can discuss the findings!

Interesting pictures and slides at

www.nasa.gov...

looks like they are finding a lot more than exoplanets.

Finally slides available here

www.nasa.gov...

Unpack your luggage folks - no colonizable planets found yet.
I hope we're not going to continue news announcements for every non-Earth planet that Kepler finds. That was not it's mission. And we have already been experiencing those announcements for years, via other technologies.

This is good news. I know a lot of people were hoping for the discovery of habitable planets, but at this early stage that would be almost impossible.

Keep in mind, these planets were discovered from data gathered the first weeks of the mission, and over 8 months of data still has to be analyzed! Those 8 months of data are said to contain over 100 possible exoplanets, but some of those will undoubtedly be false positives.

Because of the small size, fairly long orbits, and limitations imposed by a habitable zone, I believe it will be another year or two before large numbers of Earth-like exoplanets are discovered. This is mainly because scientists like to observe three passes (roughly 2-3 earth years) before confirming an object as a habitable planet.

What we CAN look forward to, however, is the discovery of Earth-like planets on fast, close orbits around smaller and/or dying stars. Since those planets have much shorter orbits and years, (and the habitable zone is closer in) I firmly believe that at least a few of these type of planets can be discovered by August.

Over and Out

[edit on 4-1-2010 by Negotium of Verum]

You guys have to remember too that the planets need to pass in front of the star for them to be visible, that alone makes it really difficult to find them, it's like searching for ants in a dark room waiting for them to pass through a tiny spot of light.

I say 5 confirmed planets in this amount of time is pretty darn good, the hard part is finding those earth like planets, believe me they are out there, we just need a bit of luck and a lot of time. =P

Originally posted by kyle43
could it be related to?

That's Venus.

It can't be Mercury because Mercury is presently passing in front of the Sun relative to SOHO's position, therefore it would appear to be moving left-to-right. The bright object in the LASCO image is moving right-to-left (you can see this if you view several days of older images), therefore it is Venus, which is presently headed behind the Sun.

As for Kepler, They are announcing that Kepler has found 4 planets (Kepler's first planetary discoveries):
www.nasa.gov...
That may sound boring to some, but it's very big news for the people working on the Kepler mission.

Some people ask "Why did they call it 'The Big Reveal' if they are only talking about 4 new run-of-the-mill exoplanets"? That's probably because this is the first information and discoveries coming from Kepler, which is a very exciting program that promises to have many more interesting discoveries.

There is a major flaw with the way the Kepler telescope finds planets. It simply looks for reductions in the amount of light put out by neighboring stars. The idea is that when a planet (or some other object) passes in front of the star - as it would in a circular orbit - they can measure the amount of light reduction and thus conclude the approximate size/density of the planet.

Well here's the problem. In order for this to work, Kepler, the planet, and the star need to be lined up almost exactly - at least within a few degrees. Otherwise, the planet could be orbiting a star and we'd never know it. Now obviously there are plenty of stars in the sky, and chances are good that a great number of them are aligned correctly with Kepler's eye so that we can, in fact, find planets there. But I guess it just seems like they could have found a more solid methodology before launching a multi-billion dollar project.

Whoever made the ant analogy hit the nail on the head.

Originally posted by paradigm619
There is a major flaw with the way the Kepler telescope finds planets...
...Well here's the problem. In order for this to work, Kepler, the planet, and the star need to be lined up almost exactly - at least within a few degrees. Otherwise, the planet could be orbiting a star and we'd never know it....

Now obviously there are plenty of stars in the sky, and chances are good that a great number of them are aligned correctly with Kepler's eye so that we can, in fact, find planets there. But I guess it just seems like they could have found a more solid methodology before launching a multi-billion dollar project.

Well, I wouldn't call it a "flaw" since it is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The transit method for finding exoplanets is one of the best methods we have "at the moment". Will we have better methods in the future? Sure we will, such as the "Terrestrial Planet Interferometer" (TPF), which will be an instrument that reduces the light from the star by millions of times in an attempt to let the faint light (or infrared) from the planet to be seen. The TPF is in early development stages by NASA right now, and congress has preliminarily voted to fund the project, but no actual funding has been put in place yet by congress.

The TPF still has a few technological hurdles to overcome (but engineers are confident that they will overcome these), so TPF may not be launched for several years, even after (and if) it gets its congressional funding.

Until then, why should we NOT use an instrument that could potentially find some planets using the transit method? Kepler may only find a small percentage of planets, but the method it uses is tried and true -- i.e., it works.

...and Kepler is not a multi-billion dollar project. The lifetime cost of the project is $600 million. That includes everything: Design, construction, launch, and 3 1/2 years of program operating expenses.

[edit on 1/4/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

Ummm.....these are huge!




Kinda speechless at the size of these

Originally posted by LeoVirgo
Ummm.....these are huge!




Kinda speechless at the size of these

the fact they are so big and orbiting around something so small is very interesting to me

Stupid hot big far away planets!
Stupid Kepler lookin' for reduction in star's light and then calculating planetary mass thing!

Why you little... grrrrr!!!!

reply to post by sunspot0


theyve discovered a new class of object. One never before seen or categorized by astronomy.

they need 3 years & software tweeks to discover terrestrials in the HZ of sun-like stars.

reply to post by paradigm619


guess what? the kepler team is composed of astronomers, engineers & astrophysicists. Theyre well aware of how their instrument works.

Assuming the chances of the right orbital inclination are 0.5% keplers fov of 140,000 usable stars is enough to give a statistically meaningfull result. Meaningfull enough that we can extrapolate those results throughout the entire galaxy.

kepler will deliver to the scientific community the frequency of terrestrial planets in the HZ of sun-like stars of the whole galaxy. Basically telling us how close & how many we should expect to find near our own solar system.

theres no problem assuming everything works as intended.

[edit on 6-1-2010 by yeti101]