Starship Asterisk*

orin stepanek wrote:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/keple ... index.html
Has anyone noticed the countdown clock? They're finally going to launch this baby. 8) I hope all goes as planned.

The Terrestrial Accretion Zone and The Habitable Zone for Various Stellar Types

<<The continuously habitable zone is bounded by the range of distances from a star for which liquid water would exist and by the range of stellar spectral types for which planets had enough time to form and complex life had enough time to evolve (less massive than F) and for which stellar flares and atmospheric condensation due to tidal locking do not occur (more massive than M). The figure shows the continuously habitable zone as calculated by Kasting, Whitmire, and Reynolds, (1993) for main-sequence stars as a function of spectral type.



The Kepler Mission performs an unbiased search for all orbital periods less than two years, that is, out to a Martian orbit, and for all spectral types of stars. It is not affected by solar or extrasolar zodiacal background and can detect planets within binary star systems.>>

orin stepanek wrote:I think once we find these Earth sized planets and the ones with oxygen and water; then we may be able to find alien life forms if there are any. The Kepler Mission may help do that.
Orin

aristarchusinexile wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:I think once we find these Earth sized planets and the ones with oxygen and water; then we may be able to find alien life forms if there are any. The Kepler Mission may help do that.
Orin

Life forms are not limited to water, oxygen, carbon. Silicone and methane are possibilities, and the universe has plenty of that stuff. And really, we are discovering brand new life form on earth in this decade .. so what the variety of forms life may take in the universe are unimaginable.

orin stepanek wrote:

aristarchusinexile wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:I think once we find these Earth sized planets and the ones with oxygen and water; then we may be able to find alien life forms if there are any. The Kepler Mission may help do that.
Orin

Life forms are not limited to water, oxygen, carbon. Silicone and methane are possibilities, and the universe has plenty of that stuff. And really, we are discovering brand new life form on earth in this decade .. so what the variety of forms life may take in the universe are unimaginable.

It would really be interesting to find out. 8) I believe spores could even be floating in space between the stars.

Orin

Doum wrote:Here is a link on Silicone as a possible life form...

Doum wrote:Here is a link on Silicone as a possible life form.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... nlife.html

Aint sure it is possible to have life form from silicone. Earth have silicone and carbon and yet carbon life form exist and no silicone life form have been found yet. Here is a NASA article about that silicone life form possibility.
http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/astrobio/feat_q ... n_life.cfm

Chris Peterson wrote:While there are a number of exotic dancers who might be considered silicone-based lifeforms,
I think the suggestion of a non-carbon alternative is for the element silicon - quite a different thing!

aristarchusinexile wrote:"Smores in space are said to be totally there"

neufer wrote:

Doum wrote:Here is a link on Silicone as a possible life form.
http://www.daviddarling.info/encycloped ... nlife.html


Silicon based:

neufer wrote:

http://www.ips-planetarium.org/planetarian/articles/common_errors_xmas.html wrote:Common Errors in "Star of Bethlehem" Planetarium Shows
by John Mosley, Griffith Observatory

<<The massing of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in 1604 was awaited with
anticipation. "Somee watched to correct their ephemerides, some for the
sake of pleasure, some because of the rarity of the occasion, some to
verify their predictions, and others, indeed, to see if there would be
a comet as had been expressly predicted by the astrology of the Arabs,"

Kepler wrote (Opera Omnia vol. II, p.617, as quoted by
BurkeGaffney). Mars came first into conjunction with Saturn,
on September 26, and then with Jupiter on October 9.
Although Kepler missed this last event because of clouds,
others in Europe saw the two planets and noted nothing amiss.

On October 10 a new star, as bright as Jupiter, was spotted essentially
between Jupiter & Saturn, which themselves were only 9 degrees apart.

Kepler observed it carefully until it faded into the sun's glare
the following year, and later wrote a book De Stella Nova in
Pede Serpentarii (About the New Star in the Serpent Holder's Foot).

While writing this book, Kepler came across a work by Laurence
Suslyga of Poland that argued that Christ was born in 4 B.C.
Kepler noticed that this was shortly after a triple conjunction that
he calculated had occurred in 7 B.C., and wondered if there was a
connection. In 1614 he published his conclusions: the triple conjunction
of 7 B.C. was followed by a massing of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in 6
B.C., and just as the conjunction and massing of 1603 4 had produced a
new star, so the events of 7 6 B.C. had produced a miraculous nova, and
THAT NOVA was the Star of Bethlehem. The biblical triple conjunction
took place in Pisces, but the massing that followed took place
in Aries -- one of the fiery signs -- just as the massing
of 1604 had also taken place in a fiery sign.

Kepler believed that the star over Bethlehem was a nova placed
there specifically to alert and guide the magi. He wrote,
"I do not doubt but that God would have condescended
to cater to the credulity of the Chaldeans.>>

bystander wrote:And we are naming a satellite after this guy?

Doum wrote: Hurray for carbon life form. Law of physics (In chemical property in this case)favor carbon life form i think (And law of physics apply everywhre in the universe). As for the rest, it's pure speculation or belief (Like a religion). So in saying i believe in other carbon life form existing elsewhere in the univers does not make it so. Silicone is so different then carbon (chemicaly speaking) that i dont think life form can exist from it. (I dont beleive it). You beleive it. So saying it dont change a thing. What they say is that silicone is closest to what carbon can do but it is still far away form what carbon can do. But i will still enjoy old or new sci-fi movie about silicone life form.

neufer wrote:

aristarchusinexile wrote:"Smores in space are said to be totally there"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/07/tech/main4851386.shtml wrote: By CBS News space consultant William Harwood

<<Lighting up the night sky, a Delta 2 rocket roared to life and vaulted away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station late today, boosting a powerful space telescope into orbit around the Sun for a $591 million mission to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars.

"I think people everywhere want to know whether, with all the stars out there, do they have planets that are Earth-sized?" said principal investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center. "Are Earths frequent or are they rare? And this gives us that answer. It's the next step in mankind's exploration of the galaxy."

The Kepler spacecraft's three-and-a-half-year mission began on time at 10:49:57 p.m. with a crackling roar and a torrent of fire that briefly turned night into day along Florida's space coast. Putting on a spectacular weekend sky show, the United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket quickly climbed from its seaside launch pad and arced away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean as it streaked into space.

Just over one minute after launch, six solid-fuel strap-on boosters that were ignited at liftoff to assist the Delta's first-stage engine burned out and fell away while a final set of three ignited for another one-minute burn. The first-stage engine shut down as planned four-and-a-half minutes after launch, and the ascent continued on the power of the Delta's compact second stage.

Two second-stage burns were required before Kepler and its solid-fuel third-stage motor were released for a final one-and-a-half-minute firing to boost the craft out of Earth's orbit. Spacecraft separation came on time at 11:52 p.m. At that point, Kepler was moving out at a blistering 6.2 miles per second.

The Delta 2 record now stands at 139 successful missions against just two failures.

"And now we have plenty of handshakes going on here in the mission director's center because we have confirmation of spacecraft separation," said NASA launch commentator George Diller. "It did occur on time at 61 minutes 49 seconds. ... So at this point, the Kepler team now really gets to work."

Engineers will spend about two months checking out and calibrating Kepler's complex systems before the mission begins in earnest.

Trailing the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, Kepler will aim a 95-megapixel camera on a patch of sky the size of an out-stretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars. Of that total, the science team has picked some 300,000 that are of the right age, composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Over the life of the mission, more than 100,000 of those will be actively monitored by Kepler.


The spacecraft's camera will not take pictures like other space telescopes. Instead, it will act as a photometer, continually monitoring the brightness of candidate stars in its wide field of view and the slight dimming that will result if planets happen to pass in front.

By studying subtle changes in brightness from such planetary transits and the timing of repeated cycles, scientists can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits.

The probability of finding sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in orbits similar to ours - and aligned so that Kepler can "see" them - is about one-half of 1 percent. Given the sample size, however, that still leaves hundreds of potential discoveries.

But it will take three-and-a-half years of around-the-clock observations to capture the repeated cycles needed to confirm detection of an Earth-like world in an Earth-like orbit.

"There's a lot of desire in the science community to understand extra-terrestrial planets, not just find them," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science. "We've already found 300 or so, mostly from the ground. But now we're entering the stage of going beyond just proving that they exist. It's how many are out there, and perhaps the most important question of all, are there any 'Earths' out there?"

Named in honor of Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German astronomer who formulated the laws of planetary motion, NASA's newest science satellite weighs 2,320 pounds and measures 15.3 feet from top to bottom. It is equipped with four solar panels capable of generating 1,100 watts of power, a radiation-hardened PowerPC flight computer and a Ka-band communications link to relay science data back to Earth. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colo.

Kepler will pass the Moon's orbit in just two days as it heads into a 371-day orbit around the Sun, separating slowly from Earth. It will aim itself at a patch of sky near the left wing of Cygnus the Swan, midway between the stars Deneb and Vega.

And then, Kepler will simply stare at the same stars for three-and-a-half years.

"An Earth-like planet passing in front of a sun-like star is going to cause the brightness of that star to dim by only 1 part per 10,000," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at San Jose State University. "That's like looking at a headlight from a great distance and trying to sense the brightness change when a flea crawls across the surface. But the Kepler instrument is designed to detect such small changes in brightness."

Kepler is capable of detecting Earth-like planets around stars ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away.

The science team is particularly interested in planets that may orbit within a star's habitable zone. Habitable zones vary in location depending on a star's size and brilliance. By timing changes in a star's light as a transit occurs, scientists can figure out the size of a presumed planet's orbit and thus whether it falls in that star's habitable zone.

"The habitable zone is where we think water will be," Borucki said. "If you can find liquid water on the surface, we think we may very well find life there. So that zone is not too close to the star, because it's too hot and the water boils. Not too far away where the water's condensed and ice-covered, a planet covered with glaciers. It's the 'Goldilocks zone' - not too hot, not too cold, just right for life."

Weiler said Kepler is a pathfinder of sorts for more sophisticated missions that may one day study the atmospheres of Earth-like planets to look for signs of biological - or even industrial - activity.

"A lot of scientists out there would like to immediately go out and build very large telescopes, not just to find Earth-like planets but to study their atmospheres, to search for clues that there might be life on those planets," Weiler said. "The trouble is, most of these proposals start at about $5 billion and work upwards from there.

"Before we actually take the next step, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets, we've got to be sure there are at least a few Earth-like planets out there. And that's why Kepler is so important. It's a rather small mission, a moderate mission (around $600 million), and it's really a pathfinder for future large space telescopes that will go after the question that we all have: Are we alone in the universe?">>

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002291/ wrote:
Bruce Betts: Kepler discovers its first five exoplanets
by Bruce Betts : Jan. 4, 2010

<<Congratulations to NASA's Kepler mission team on their announcement of the discovery of its first five exoplanets (planets around other stars). All five are "hot Jupiters," meaning that they are the sizes of the gas giants in our solar system, but are extremely close to their parent stars. These are the easiest for Kepler to discover, so not surprisingly the first to be announced. The discoveries are based on about six weeks worth of data.

Kepler uses the transit method of planet detection. The spacecraft stares at the same 150,000 stars over and over and looks for tiny dips in light that would indicate a transit of a planet in front of the parent star, blocking out some of the starlight. Science operations started in May 2009.

Transit light curves for Kepler's first five exoplanets

Kepler uses the transit photometry method to discover planets orbiting other stars. Credit: NASA

The new exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b, range in size from similar to Neptune to larger than Jupiter, and have orbits ("year" lengths) ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 Earth days. Estimated temperatures of the planets range from 1,200 to 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit). All five of the exoplanets orbit stars hotter and larger than Earth's Sun. All have been confirmed as exoplanets by ground-based observatories.

Sizes and Temperatures of Kepler's first five exoplanets

On January 4, 2010, the Kepler mission announced its first five planet discoveries. All are hot Jupiters, gas-giant-sized planets orbiting very close to their host stars. Credit: NASA

Kepler's true goal is to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. That will take three years of data, and lots of Earth-based follow-up from projects like FINDS Exo-Earths. In the meantime, Kepler should continue to produce a multitude of discoveries of larger planets orbiting closer to their parent stars.

First Light for Kepler

Taken on April 8, 2009, these are the first images taken by the planet-hunting mission Kepler. The large image in the center shows a 100 degree square patch of sky containing an estimated 14 million stars. Kepler will observe this region continuously for more than 3 years, searching for signs of transiting planets in a group 100,000 pre-selected stars. The dark lines crisscrossing the image indicate the arrangement of the charged coupled devices (CCD's) in Kepler's powerful camera). The top left image is of a region 1000 times smaller than the full field, which contains the known transiting planet TrES-2. The image on the top right includes star cluster NGC 6791, at a distance of 13,000 lightyears from Earth. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

A reservoir of comets deep in the outer reaches of the solar system has so far escaped direct detection

The Kepler spacecraft's mission is a straightforward one: keep a vigilant watch on a large patch of stars to see if they dim, even just slightly, on a regular basis. The idea is that a planet passing in front of its host star will reveal itself to Kepler by blotting out a fraction of the star's light. This transit method has already borne fruit: NASA's Kepler spotted five planets in the first few weeks after its 2009 launch, and dozens more have been detected over the past decade from the ground and from other spacecraft. But Kepler's strength lies in its unique sensitivity to Earth-like planets—small, terrestrial worlds in temperate orbits that allow liquid water to persist.

That same sensitivity, according to a new study, might allow Kepler to identify objects in the Oort cloud—the massive sea of comets widely believed to fill the outer reaches of the solar system but never directly observed. Dutch astronomer Jan Oort predicted its existence in 1950 as a way of explaining the origin of comets that come streaking into the inner solar system from afar. A few known distant objects have been hypothesized to belong to the innermost fringe of the cloud, but their true provenance remains unknown.

In January, when mission scientists unveiled their first discoveries with Kepler, a couple of strange stars turned up. Each has a light curve that is the reverse of what is expected from Kepler. The signal is dimmest when a planet-size companion passes behind the star rather that in front. This means the companions are brighter per unit surface area (and therefore hotter) than the stars they circle.

NASA's Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars. These stars are being monitored for subtle brightness changes as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system.

Astronomers will use the new data to determine if orbiting planets are responsible for brightness variations in several hundred stars. These stars make up a full range of temperatures, sizes and ages. Many of them are stable, while others pulsate. Some show starspots, which are similar to sunspots, and a few produce flares that would sterilize their nearest planets.

Kepler, a space observatory, looks for the data signatures of planets by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars when planets cross in front of, or transit them. The size of the planet can be derived from the change in the star's brightness.

The 28-member Kepler science team also is using ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope to perform follow-up observations on a specific set of 400 objects of interest. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations will determine which of the candidates can be identified as planets. That data will be released to the scientific community in February 2011.

Without the additional information, candidates that are actual planets cannot be distinguished from false alarms, such as binary stars -- two stars that orbit each other. The size of the planetary candidates also can be only approximated until the size of the stars they orbit is determined from additional spectroscopic observations made by ground-based telescopes.

"I look forward to the scientific community analyzing the data and announcing new exoplanet results in the coming months," said Lia LaPiana, Kepler's program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“This is the most precise, nearly continuous, longest and largest data set of stellar photometry ever,” said Kepler Deputy Principal Investigator David Koch of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “The results will only get better as the duration of the data set grows with time.”

Kepler will continue conducting science operations until at least November 2012, searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take at least three years to locate and verify an Earth-size planet.

“The Kepler observations will tell us whether there are many stars with planets that could harbor life, or whether we might be alone in our galaxy,” said mission science principal investigator William Borucki of Ames.
...
To see the science data, visit: http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler