Kepler

[Doum]

http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-k ... t-bonanza/

[MargaritaMc]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

ScienceCasts: A Sudden Multiplication of Planets
ScienceAtNASA

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

[orin stepanek]

As per Doum! http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=33004

[BDanielMayfield]

As per Doum! http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=33004

This news is great. To sum it up, the Kepler team have come up with a method to verify the existence of exoplanet candidates in multiple planet systems in a much quicker way. Thus they confirmed 715 prospective planets in 305 star systems in the first published use of this new verification tool.

More bulk candidate confirmations will be coming too, for several reasons: There are many more Kepler objects of interest awaiting application of this new method, and this still didn't include the last year of Kepler data. Also, it seems that nature is telling us that planetary systems might usually have more than just one planet.

Bruce

[Doum]

Virtually all red dwarf stars have at least one planet in orbit around them.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 071437.htm

[MargaritaMc]

The K2 Mission: Characterization and Early results

Steve B. Howell, et al

http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5163

The paper and the Kepler 2 mission are explored in this astrobite:
http://astrobites.org/2014/03/03/kepler-2-0/

[MargaritaMc]

There's an interview with Steve Howell in New Scientist, 10 March 2014

I'd give new Kepler mission a 150 per cent chance'
NASA astrophysicist Steve Howell is confident that a new method of aiming the crippled Kepler space telescope will convince the space agency to keep it alive.

[Doum]

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discovery
NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

The journal Science has embargoed the findings until the time of the news conference.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-113

The public is invited to listen to the teleconference live on UStream at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

[bystander]

NASA ARC: Kepler Discovers First Earth-size Planet in 'Habitable Zone'
UMichigan: Earth-size Planet Found that Might Hold Liquid Water
Gemini/Keck: First Potentially Habitable Earth-size Planet Confirmed
SFSU: Kepler Discovers New Rocky Planet that May Have Liquid Water
SETI: First Discovery of an Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone
PSU: First Earth-size Planet Discovered in Another Star's Habitable Zone
JPL: Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone'

Kepler-186f, the first Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)

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Kepler-186 and the Solar System (Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)

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An Earth-Sized Planet in the Habitable Zone of a Cool Star - Elisa V. Quintana et al

• Science 344(6181) 277 (18 Apr 2014) DOI: 10.1126/science.1249403
  arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1404.5667 > 22 Apr 2014

[mjimih]

And so the epic discussion begins of the potentiality of mankind's first actual target of a possible alternate home (outside our solar system) . And to decipher it's secrets. Reminds me of an earlier age of exploration.

These Earth twins henceforth need popular names don't they? Run contests by school children to come up with popular names for these potential Earths.

[BDanielMayfield]

They’re getting closer, but there’s still no place like home.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronom ... found-yet/

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[geckzilla]

That was a pretty cool video.

[astrolabe]

Hello All,

Nice to see some of the "old Guard" still kickin' around. I can see I've a lot of catching up to do.

[Viperone]

The new planets being found probably over 2500 the distances are so far that the impossible distances are truely impossible. 1,350,000 years one way. Need a Saturn 5 just to store all the toilet paper. All this is moot. All the stars in our general area will be scattered all over the universe maybe our sun cast completely out of the galaxy. In 4 billion years Andromeda slams head on with the milky way going to another star close by there are none. The closest star is 4.5 light years or 73,000 years one way. A million years travel time is too far. We need to find planets in a stable galaxy and away from the train wreck that will rip us apart. If that dont do it then the sun will destroy earth as it dies in 5 billion years. Our little mark in time is just a dot in time. Andromeda will fill our sky and we have a ringside seat. Where we are in the galaxy we will be badly affected and slung gravitationally light years stars torn out of orbits some cast out some absorbed by the new galaxy.

[geckzilla]

Struggling with cosmic perspective?

[orin stepanek]

Kepler home page! Since the original seems to be broken! http://kepler.nasa.gov/

[saturno2]

orin stepanek wrote
"Maybe 40 billion Earth sized planets ".
I think the probability of to find life on one
of those planets is high

[MargaritaMc]

Sun’s stroke keeps Kepler online
Space telescope beats mechanical failures to begin a second mission that will trace new celestial targets.

Mark Zastrow
21 October 2014

The crippled Kepler space telescope is unexpectedly enjoying a second lease of life. The exoplanet-hunting probe will now cast its gaze on star clusters, the centre of the Milky Way and the Solar System’s outer planets as it scans a ribbon of the cosmos for the next three years. This month it has been gazing at gas clouds shrouding infant stars in the constellations Scorpius and Ophiuchus.

Click to view full size image

The telescope, originally designed to look for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our region of the Galaxy, has just yielded the first data set since its reincarnation after mechanical failures. Its science team is still busy analysing data from the initial planet-hunting mission, so Kepler’s managers at NASA have left it to the wider astronomical community to choose specific targets for a second mission, known as K2, and to comb through the output.

...[They] fashioned a crutch for Kepler using the only resource available: sunlight. Positioned so that its long side faces the Sun, the spacecraft leans against the pressure created by the onslaught of photons and balances using its two good wheels.
Read more here: http://www.nature.com/news/sun-s-stroke ... 023#kepler

Margarita

[bystander]

Kepler Proves It Can Still Find Planets
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | 2014 Dec 18

[c]This artist's conception portrays the first planet discovered by the Kepler spacecraft
during its K2 mission. A transit of the planet was teased out of K2's noisier data using
ingenious computer algorithms developed by a CfA researcher. The newfound planet,
HIP 116454b, has a diameter of 20,000 miles (two and a half times the size of Earth)
and weighs 12 times as much. It orbits its star once every 9.1 days.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)[/c]

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To paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the Kepler spacecraft's death was greatly exaggerated. Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, Kepler is still alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler's "second life."

"Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kepler has been reborn and is continuing to make discoveries. Even better, the planet it found is ripe for follow-up studies," says lead author Andrew Vanderburg of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

NASA's Kepler spacecraft detects planets by looking for transits, when a star dims slightly as a planet crosses in front of it. The smaller the planet, the weaker the dimming, so brightness measurements must be exquisitely precise. To enable that precision, the spacecraft must maintain a steady pointing.

Kepler's primary mission came to an end when the second of four reaction wheels used to stabilize the spacecraft failed. Without at least three functioning reaction wheels, Kepler couldn't be pointed accurately.

Rather than giving up on the plucky spacecraft, a team of scientists and engineers developed an ingenious strategy to use pressure from sunlight as a virtual reaction wheel to help control the spacecraft. The resulting second mission, K2, promises to not only continue Kepler's search for other worlds, but also introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, active galaxies, and supernovae.

Due to Kepler's reduced pointing capabilities, extracting useful data requires sophisticated computer analysis. Vanderburg and his colleagues developed specialized software to correct for spacecraft movements, achieving about half the photometric precision of the original Kepler mission. ...

First Kepler K2 Exoplanet Discovery Confirmed
University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy | WM Keck Observatory | 2014 Dec 18

Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission
NASA | Ames Research Center | Kepler K2 | 2014 Dec 18

[Doum]

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-planets-go ... -zone.html

Astronomers announced today that they have found eight new planets in the "Goldilocks" zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. This doubles the number of small planets (less than twice the diameter of Earth) believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars. Among these eight, the team identified two that are the most similar to Earth of any known exoplanets to date. ...

[bystander]

Eight New Planets Found in "Goldilocks" Zone
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | 2015 Jan 06

Kepler Marks 1,000th Exoplanet Discovery, Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones
NASA | Ames Research Center | Kepler | 2015 Jan 06

Exoplanet bounty includes most Earth-like worlds yet
Nature News | 2015 Jan 06

Validation of Twelve Small Kepler Transiting Planets in the Habitable Zone - Guillermo Torres et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1501.01101 > 06 Jan 2015

[bystander]

Three Nearly Earth-size Planets Found Orbiting Nearby Star
University of California, Berkeley | 2015 Jan 16

[i]After the Kepler Space Telescope lost two if its four reaction wheels, it was unable to point accurately enough for long observations. A retooled mission, dubbed K2, is still able to obtain images of transiting planets by looking along the plane of the galaxy, or the ecliptic.[b](Credit: NASA)[/b][/i]

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the “Goldilocks” zone, a region where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life to exist.

The star, EPIC 201367065, is a cool red M-dwarf about half the size and mass of our own sun. At a distance of 150 light years, the star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets. The star’s proximity means it’s bright enough for astronomers to study the planets’ atmospheres to determine whether they are like Earth’s atmosphere and possibly conducive to life. ...

The three planets are 2.1, 1.7 and 1.5 times the size of Earth. The outermost planet, at 1.5 Earth radii, is the smallest of the bunch and orbits far enough from its host star that it receives levels of light from its star similar to those received by Earth from the sun, said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura, who discovered the planets Jan. 6 while conducting a computer analysis of the Kepler data NASA has made available to astronomers. He calculated that the three planets receive 10.5, 3.2, and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth. ...

Newly Discovered Three-Planet System Holds Clues to Atmospheres of Earth-size Worlds
University of Hawaii | Institute for Astronomy | 2015 Jan 16

A nearby M star with three transiting super-Earths discovered by K2 - Ian J. M. Crossfield et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1501.03798 > 15 Jan 2015

[bystander]

Kepler astronomers discover ancient star with five Earth-size planets
Iowa State University | 2015 Jan 27

[i]Kepler-444 is a recently discovered star with at least five Earth-size planets. The system is 11.2 billion years old. [b](Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine)[/b][/i]

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Astronomers poring over four years of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have discovered a star that’s 11.2 billion years old and has at least five Earth-size planets.

“We thus show that Earth-size planets have formed throughout most of the Universe’s 13.8-billion-year history, leaving open the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the Galaxy,” the astronomers wrote ...

The paper describes Kepler-444, a star that’s 25 percent smaller than our sun and is 117 light years from Earth. The star’s five known planets have sizes that fall between Mercury and Venus. Those planets are so close to their star that they complete their orbits in fewer than 10 days. At that distance, they’re all much hotter than Mercury and aren’t habitable. ...

Kepler-444 came from the first generation of stars. This system tells us that planets were forming around stars nearly 7 billion years before our own solar system. ...

Ancient star system reveals Earth-sized planets forming near start of universe
University of Sydney | via EurekAlert | 2015 Jan 27

Astronomers discover a replica solar system
Yale University | 2015 Jan 27

An ancient extrasolar system with five sub-Earth-size planets - T. L. Campante et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1501.06227 > 26 Jan 2015

[BDanielMayfield]

So, since we can take this as evidence that the universe has been cranking out new planetary systems for well over 10 billion years, Fermi's paradox is stronger now than when he first asked:

Where is everybody?

(By "everybody" he meant alien civilizations.)