More Kepler Data Available
Kepler Delivers More Data for Exoplanet Hunters, NASA Ames Research Center
“On May 28 NASA’s Kepler mission delivered new data to the NASA Exoplanet Archive for Exoplanet hunters to dig into. At the same, NASA Ames Research Center’s Michele Johnson sat down with Michael Haas, Kepler science office director, for an interview to find out more.”
Marc’s note: The data includes 1,924 Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) that have not been fully analyzed yet.
“MJ: If you haven’t finished the analysis, why are you releasing this information now? It seems rather preliminary.
MH: You are right, it is preliminary, but it also represents a significant body of work and contains valuable information for the scientific community.”
For anyone at all interested in Kepler, or in searches for Earth-like planets, this article is a must-read. Michael Haas gives very satisfying answers and explanations, removing much of the earlier ambiguity. I’m glad to see them now releasing “preliminary” data from the Kepler program to the science community and the public.
I think it’s worth stressing that this isn’t a change in program policy, but rather Kepler has now completed its first full cycle (Kepler has a 371-day orbit, and three transits are required to qualify an event), so preliminary data is useful for the first time for analyzing whether many of the tracked planets are possible candidates.