Interesting Kepler News Ahead?
NASA Hosts Media Briefing to Discuss Kepler Planetary Discovery
“NASA will host a news briefing at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, April 18, to announce new discoveries from the agency’s Kepler mission. The briefing will be held in the Syvertson Auditorium, Building N-201, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and be broadcast live on NASA Television and on the agency’s website.”
Keith’s note: Not that this has any indiciation of what will be announced but Lisa Kaltenegger’s Kepler-related publications all focus on small, habitable extrasolar planets and moons. (search). Thomas Barclay’s papers also focus on Kepler and extrasolar planets. (search). These papers (by other authors) “The detectability of habitable exomoons with Kepler“ and “Where to Find Habitable “Earths” in Circumbinary Systems“ were submitted to astro-ph last week.
I don’t think Kepler can spot Earth-sized planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like stars, so I’m guessing we’ll get a whole new slew of planet-candidates that they’ve found, hopefully including more “MEarths” (Earth-sized planets in possibly habitable orbits around M-class stars). Even better would be if they confirmed one or two MEarths.
Are those accepted definitions now? Last I heard, Class M planets were a Star Trek designation.
Nah, it’s just a cute phrasing for it. And it rolls off the tongue – MEarth.
Hehehe, you don’t want to smell how that sounds to a Spanish-speaking person. I’d say it’s a “shitty” phrasing (no disrespect intended, it’s part of the pun) if you just add a phonetic “a” at the end, like my brain automatically did when I tried pronouncing it. ;P
Reminds me; in Poland there’s a cola drink called “Fart”.
(This is the word for “luck”.)
Umm…. Actually that is exactly what Kepler was designed to do. And in only 3.5 years (enough time for 3 Earth period orbits of “Sun like” Stars). Due to greater than anticipated stellar variability and slightly higher noise from the instrument, this turned out to be very difficult. SO they extended the mission. They are almost guaranteed to find an Earth-like planet, orbiting a Sun-like star in the goldilocks zone (assuming of course the last reaction wheel does not quit tomorrow)
They are looking for habitable moons around giant planets orbiting stars, like the rebel base in Star Wars. That way they can look for variations in the occultation period of a large planet, which is easier to detect than the occultation of a very small planet by itself.
Hi Vulture4,
I do not believe that Kepler has the ability to measure occultations (transits) of moons around giant planets. As you know,
Kepler indirectly detects orbiting planets by looking for changes in luminosity of a star caused by planets transiting across the star in the same plane as Kepler’s optics. I am pretty sure Kepler does not have the sensitivity to discriminate second order light curves…in other words the 2nd order variation in luminosity due to a moon orbiting a planet as the planet makes a transit across the host star. Of course, I could be wrong.
You are correct — Kepler will not detect transits of moons around giant planets. The idea is that a moon orbiting a transiting Jupiter-like planet will cause the transit times to vary periodically. Detection of such transit time variations would be evidence of the moon, and the Moon can be characterized from the details of the variations.
I’ve wondered about that. Aren’t moons around large planets much more likely to have major, even extreme, seasonal variations, given the typical elliptical orbit of large planets? If that’s the case, then a given candidate would need more observations and a well-known period in order to determine its habitability. Even an eclipse could be an extreme event, with potentially longer occlusions and occurring more often than for a planet.
I’m reminded of the Niven “Known Space” stories where unmanned probes made their observations only at the best of times and they ended up sending colonies to marginally habitable planets.
Pitty that Kepler is showing its age with those reaction wheels. But I’m glad at least they’re letting it continue on, and are finding some nice planetary gems along the way.
I also realize its mode of planet-finding operation isn’t conducive to searching closer-in stars. Otherwise, before the end, I’d have liked to see NASA turn this old soldier about towards the Centari group and just let it stare at them until its wheels fall off (maybe literally)