- Nov 28, 2001
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Kepler is a NASA mission that I have been excited about since its launch a few months back. What it is is a planet finding mission. It surveys a small patch of the sky constantly for several years looking for the apparent dimming of a planets host star caused by a transit of the planet in front of said star. By examining thousands of stars over many years it should be able to discover MANY new planets including earth sized candidates. Well only a few months out and they already have a table of discovered planets:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/tableofdiscoveries/
These all fall into the so called Hot Jupiter category (planets the size of Jupiter orbiting crazily close to their host star) with average orbitals periods of a few days and orbital radii of 0.0xx AU!! I'm not surprised these are the first types of planets to be discovered as the mission has only been observing for a few months. To discover other Earths will take years because they need to wait for several transits to occur to confirm the discover and "earths" have a periods of 300+ days or so (365 for earth
).
I will have to pay frequent visits to that table and see how it grows. There are now hundreds and hundreds of known exoplanets!
http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/tableofdiscoveries/
These all fall into the so called Hot Jupiter category (planets the size of Jupiter orbiting crazily close to their host star) with average orbitals periods of a few days and orbital radii of 0.0xx AU!! I'm not surprised these are the first types of planets to be discovered as the mission has only been observing for a few months. To discover other Earths will take years because they need to wait for several transits to occur to confirm the discover and "earths" have a periods of 300+ days or so (365 for earth
).I will have to pay frequent visits to that table and see how it grows. There are now hundreds and hundreds of known exoplanets!
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