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Post by auntym on Feb 9, 2011 12:24:41 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/science/03planet.html?_r=1interesting article from the N.Y. TIMES...KEPLER PLANET HUNTER FINDS 1200 POSSIBILITIESBy DENNIS OVERBYE Published: February 2, 2011 Graphic A New Planetary System Astronomers have cracked the Milky Way like a piñata, and planets are now pouring out so fast that they do not know what to do with them all. In a long-awaited announcement, scientists operating NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting satellite reported on Wednesday that they had identified 1,235 possible planets orbiting other stars, potentially tripling the number of known planets. Of the new candidates, 68 are one and a quarter times the size of the Earth or smaller — smaller, that is, than any previously discovered planets outside the solar system, which are known as exoplanets. Fifty-four of the possible exoplanets are in the so-called habitable zones of stars dimmer and cooler than the Sun, where temperatures should be moderate enough for liquid water. Astronomers said that it would take years to confirm that all of these candidates were really planets — by using ground-based telescopes to measure their masses, for example, or inspecting them to see if background stars are causing optical mischief. Many of them might never be vetted because of the dimness of their stars and the lack of telescope time and astronomers to do it all. But statistical tests of a sample suggest that 80 to 95 percent of the objects on it are real, as opposed to blips in the data. “It boggles the mind,” said the Kepler team’s leader, William Borucki, of the Ames Research Center in Northern California. TO CONTINUE READING CLICK ON ABOVE LINK
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Post by swamprat on May 23, 2011 19:06:49 GMT -6
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Reveals Strangeness of Alien Solar SystemsPublished May 23, 2011 Space.comAlien solar systems with multiple planets appear to be common in our galaxy, but most of them are quite different than our own, a new study finds. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope detected 1,235 alien planet candidates in its first four months of operation. Of those, 408 reside in multiple-planet systems, suggesting that our own configuration of multiple worlds orbiting a single star isn't so special. What may be special, however, is the orientation of our solar system's planets. Some of them are tilted significantly off the solar system's plane, while most of the Kepler systems are nearly as flat as a tabletop, researchers said. Watching for transiting planetsThe Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009, tasked with searching for Earth-size alien planets in their stars' habitable zones — that just-right range of distances that can support liquid water. Kepler finds these distant worlds by searching for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness that occur when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — it from Earth's perspective. The 1,235 candidate planets detected so far still need to be confirmed by follow-up studies, though researchers estimate at least 80 percent of them will pan out. Nearly one-third of the Kepler candidates are part of multiple-planet solar systems, which came as a surprise to researchers. "We didn't anticipate that we would find so many multiple-transit systems," said astronomer David Latham, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in a statement. "We thought we might see two or three. Instead, we found more than 100." Strangely flat orbits In our solar system, some planet orbits are tilted by up to 7 degrees, meaning that an alien astronomer looking for transits wouldn’t be able to detect all eight planets. In particular, they would miss Mercury and Venus, researchers said. The planetary systems spotted by Kepler have orbits tilted less than 1 degree, they added. These multiplanet systems are probably so flat because they lack Jupiter-size giant planets, whose gravitational influence can disrupt planetary systems, tilting the orbits of neighboring worlds, researchers said. As Kepler continues to gather data, it will be able to spot planets with wider orbits, including some in the habitable zones of their stars. Transit timing variations may play a key role in confirming the first rocky planets in their stars' habitable zones, researchers said. Read more and see slide show: www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/05/23/nasas-kepler-space-telescope-reveals-strangeness-alien-solar-systems/#ixzz1NE4Wf2RY
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Post by auntym on Apr 18, 2013 13:03:59 GMT -6
news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57580174-76/nasas-kepler-spacecraft-to-reveal-new-planetary-discoveries/NASA's Kepler spacecraft to reveal new planetary discoveries?The space agency is announcing new sightings found by the Kepler spacecraft mission. by Dara Kerr April 17, 2013 Artist's concept of NASA's Kepler space telescope. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been in hot pursuit of extraterrestrial life for four years now. And, on Thursday, it's letting people know just what it's found lurking in the Milky Way. NASA is holding a Kepler briefing at 11 a.m. PT on Thursday. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and on UStream. The agency will also host a moderated Web chat with Kepler Deputy Project Scientist Nick Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. During the briefing, people can submit questions to the Kepler scientists via Twitter with the hashtag #AskNASA. Kepler launched in March 2009 and was NASA's first mission capable of finding Earth-size and smaller planets encircling other stars within the Milky Way galaxy. The space telescope has specifically been looking for planets within a certain distance of a star that would allow for a surface temperature where liquid water could exist. CONTINUE READING: news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57580174-76/nasas-kepler-spacecraft-to-reveal-new-planetary-discoveries/
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Post by swamprat on Apr 18, 2013 15:21:48 GMT -6
NASA's Kepler Discovers its Smallest 'Habitable Zone' Planets to Date04.18.2013 Relative sizes of Kepler habitable zone planets discovered as of April 18, 2013. Left to right: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions). Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech. MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets. Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Kepler-62e, orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth. The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus. The Kepler space telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measures the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun. Orbiting its star every 122 days, Kepler-62e was the first of these habitable zone planets identified. Kepler-62f, with an orbital period of 267 days, was later found by Eric Agol, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and co-author of a paper on the discoveries published in the journal Science. The size of Kepler-62f is now measured, but its mass and composition are not. However, based on previous studies of rocky exoplanets similar in size, scientists are able to estimate its mass by association. The two habitable zone worlds orbiting Kepler-62 have three companions in orbits closer to their star, two larger than the size of Earth and one about the size of Mars. Kepler-62b, Kepler-62c and Kepler-62d, orbit every five, 12, and 18 days, respectively, making them very hot and inhospitable for life as we know it. The five planets of the Kepler-62 system orbit a star classified as a K2 dwarf, measuring just two-thirds the size of the sun and only one-fifth as bright. At seven billion years old, the star is somewhat older than the sun. It is about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. A companion to Kepler-69c, known as Kepler-69b, is more than twice the size of Earth and whizzes around its star every 13 days. The Kepler-69 planets' host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type. It is 93 percent the size of the sun and 80 percent as luminous and is located approximately 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. "We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, the sun. Finding a planet in the habitable zone around a star like our sun is a significant milestone toward finding truly Earth-like planets," said Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, Calif., and lead author of the Kepler-69 system discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal. Early in the mission, the Kepler telescope primarily found large, gaseous giants in very close orbits of their stars. Known as "hot Jupiters," these are easier to detect due to their size and very short orbital periods. Earth would take three years to accomplish the three transits required to be accepted as a planet candidate. As Kepler continues to observe, transit signals of habitable zone planets the size of Earth orbiting stars like the sun will begin to emerge. www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-62-kepler-69.html
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Post by auntym on May 16, 2013 13:44:54 GMT -6
www.space.com/21167-alien-planets-kepler-spacecraft-crippled.html Planet-Hunting Kepler Spacecraft Suffers Major Failure, NASA Says[/color] by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com. Date: 15 May 2013 This story was updated at 5:20 p.m. EDT. The planet-hunting days of NASA's prolific Kepler space telescope, which has discovered more than 2,700 potential alien worlds to date, may be over. The second of Kepler's four reaction wheels — devices that allow the observatory to maintain its position in space — has failed, NASA officials announced Wednesday (May 15). If one or both of those failed wheels cannot be brought back, the telescope likely cannot lock onto target stars precisely enough to detect orbiting planets, scientists have said. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets] Staring at stars The $600 million Kepler spacecraft spots exoplanets by flagging the tiny brightness dips caused when they pass in front of their host stars from the instrument's perspective. The mission's main goal is to determine how common Earth-like alien planets are throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Kepler needs three functioning reaction wheels to stay locked onto its more than 150,000 target stars. The observatory had four wheels when it launched in March 2009 — three for immediate use, and one spare. One wheel (known as number two) failed in July 2012, giving Kepler no margin for error. And now wheel number four has apparently given up the ghost as well, after showing signs of elevated friction for the past five months or so. "This is something that we've been expecting for a while, unfortunately," NASA science chief John Grunsfeld told reporters today. Grunsfeld is a former astronaut who flew on five space shuttle missions, including three that serviced or upgraded NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in Earth orbit. But in-space repair is not an option for Kepler, which circles the sun rather than Earth and is currently about 40 million miles (64 million kilometers) from our planet. CONTINUE READING: www.space.com/21167-alien-planets-kepler-spacecraft-crippled.html
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Post by auntym on May 16, 2013 13:58:58 GMT -6
www.space.com/21179-kepler-telescope-failure-poem.html?cmpid=514648 Astronomer's Poem Mourns Ailing Kepler Spacecraftby Clara Moskowitz, SPACE.com Assistant Managing Editor Follow Clara Moskowitz on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com. Date: 16 May 2013 Oh, Kepler, we hardly knew ye.Scientists have been mourning the news that NASA's prolific planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope may have to cease its search for good. NASA announced on Wednesday (May 15) that one of Kepler's four reaction wheels, which maintain its position in space, has failed. While space agency officials haven't admitted defeat yet, saying there is still a chance the vehicle could be repaired, the news is sobering. Astronomer Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, perhaps put it best by reacting to the news with his own take on the W.H. Auden poem "Funeral Blues," which Marcy tweaked to fit Kepler's circumstances. Read on below to see Marcy's complete poetic ode to Kepler sent in to SPACE.com: Stop all the clocks, cut off the internet, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let jet airplanes circle at night overhead Sky-writing over Cygnus: Kepler is dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of doves, Let the traffic officers wear black cotton gloves. Kepler was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week, no weekend rest, My noon, my midnight, my talks, my song; I thought Kepler would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are still wanted now; let's honor every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; For nothing will ever be this good. With thanks to W.H.Auden. MORE: www.space.com/21179-kepler-telescope-failure-poem.html?cmpid=514648
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Post by auntym on May 19, 2013 11:54:48 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/saving-kepler-the-mission-that-changed-our-view-of-the-probability-of-life-in-the-universe.htmlMay 19, 2013 Saving Kepler! --The Mission That Changed Our View of the Probability of Life in the UniverseThe NASA mission that has changed our view of the probability of life in the Universe is in jeopardy. The Kepler has shown that planets are common throughout the Milky Way and the billions of galaxies in the cosmos. NASA officials announced Wednesday, May 15, that the Kepler space telescope – the agency's primary instrument for detecting planets beyond our solar system – had suffered a critical failure and could soon be shut down permanently.Stanford professor and former NASA official explains how NASA might revive the Kepler space telescopeS, Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics, helped guide the Kepler mission when he served as director of NASA Ames Research Center. He explains how NASA might bring the planet-hunting spacecraft back online. The Kepler spacecraft's photo-detector array registers more than 100,000 stars at a time, Hubbard said, and in order to detect exoplanets (planets orbiting stars outside our solar system), the telescope must remain extremely steady so that the stars do not wander across the optics. A series of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels whir within the telescope to hold its gaze. At least three must be functioning to keep Kepler stable. One failed about a year ago and was shut off, and NASA scientists announced Wednesday, May 15, that a second wheel was no longer operating and that Kepler had paused operations. In a conversation with Stanford News Service, Hubbard explained the possible ways that NASA could bring the spacecraft back online, and what planet hunters will do next if that's not possible. It will be very sad if it can't go on any longer, but the taxpayers did get their money's worth. Kepler has, so far, detected more than 2,700 candidate exoplanets orbiting distant stars, including many Earth-size planets that are within their star's habitable zone, where water could exist in liquid form. CONTINUE READING: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/05/saving-kepler-the-mission-that-changed-our-view-of-the-probability-of-life-in-the-universe.html
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Post by swamprat on Sept 27, 2013 18:19:45 GMT -6
Number of Confirmed Alien Planets Nears 1,000 by Mike Wall, Senior Writer Just two decades after discovering the first world beyond our solar system, astronomers are closing in on alien planet No. 1,000. Four of the five main databases that catalog the discoveries of exoplanets now list more than 900 confirmed alien worlds, and two of them peg the tally at 986 as of today (Sept. 26). So the 1,000th exoplanet may be announced in a matter of days or weeks, depending on which list you prefer. That's a lot of progress since 1992, when researchers detected two planets orbiting a rotating neutron star, or pulsar, about 1,000 light-years from Earth. Confirmation of the first alien world circling a "normal" star like our sun did not come until 1995. And the discoveries will keep pouring in, as astronomers continue to hone their techniques and sift through the data returned by instruments on the ground and in space. The biggest numbers in the near future should come from NASA's Kepler space telescope, which racked up many finds before being hobbled in May of this year when the second of its four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed. Kepler has identified 3,588 planet candidates to date. Just 151 of these worlds have been confirmed so far, but mission scientists have said they expect at least 90 percent will end up being the real deal. But even these numbers, as impressive as they are, represent just the tip of our Milky Way galaxy's immense planetary iceberg. Kepler studied a tiny patch of sky, after all, and it only spotted planets that happened to cross their stars' faces from the instrument's perspective. Many more planets are thus out there, zipping undetected around their parent stars. Indeed, a team of researchers estimated last year that every Milky Way star hosts, on average, 1.6 worlds — meaning that our galaxy perhaps harbors 160 billion planets.
And those are just the worlds with obvious parent stars. In 2011, a different research team calculated that "rogue planets" (which cruise through space unbound to a star) may outnumber "normal" exoplanets by 50 percent or so.Nailing down the numbers is of obvious interest, but what astronomers really want is a better understanding of the nature and diversity of alien worlds. And it's becoming more and more apparent that this diversity is stunning. Scientists have found exoplanets as light and airy as Styrofoam, for example, and others as dense as iron. They've also discovered a number of worlds that appear to orbit in their stars' habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could support the existence of liquid water and thus, perhaps, life as we know it. But the search continues for possibly the biggest exoplanet prize: the first true alien Earth. Kepler was designed to determine how frequently Earth-like exoplanets occur throughout the Milky Way, and mission scientists have expressed confidence that they can still achieve that primay goal. So some Earth analogs likely lurk in Kepler's data, just waiting to be pulled out. The five chief exoplanet-discovery databases, and their current tallies, are: the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (986); the Exoplanets Catalog, run by the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo's Planetary Habitability Laboratory (986); the NASA Exoplanet Archive (905); the Exoplanet Orbit Database (732); and the Open Exoplanet Catalog (948). The Planetary Habitability Lab keeps track of all five databases, whose different numbers highlight the uncertainties involved in exoplanet detection and confirmation. Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.www.space.com/22956-confirmed-alien-planets-number-1000.html
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2013 14:10:25 GMT -6
What unique potential exists right in our own back yard.. I love the limitless..feeling that gives.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2013 12:20:13 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Feb 24, 2014 15:21:49 GMT -6
Kepler's New Universe Published on Feb 19, 2014 Kepler has opened up a new universe. Only about 20 years ago, we didn't know if there were any other planets around any other stars besides our own, now we know we live in a galaxy that contains more planets than stars. Every star in our galaxy has on average 1.6 planets in orbit around it. If you want more videos on astronomy and space, make sure to subscribe to Deep Astronomy. We also have another channel for weekly astronomy news. Please subscribe!: youtube.com/TheSpaceFanNewsFollow us on Google+ google.com/+DeepAstronomygoogle.com/+SpaceFanNewsgoogle.com/+TonyDarnellgoogle.com/+ScottLewisWe also have a great Google+ Community, come share your thoughts and join the discussion! plus.google.com/communities/1... Use Twitter? So do we, give us a follow and say hi. Tony: twitter.com/DeepAstronomy Scott: twitter.com/ScientificScott Don't forget Facebook, there's a whole page dedicated to Space Fans: facebook.com/SpaceFan
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Post by swamprat on Feb 27, 2014 10:34:26 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Jun 6, 2014 12:55:30 GMT -6
www.space.com/17383-kepler-planet-hunting-nasa-telescope-infographic.html?cmpid=514648_20140606_25484406NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Explained (Infographic)by Karl Tate, SPACE.com Infographics Artist May 02, 2013 The mission of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope is to identify and characterize Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. Data returned by the telescope will allow scientists to estimate the number and sizes of planets in alien solar systems, and help identify the types of stars that could harbor planets. Launched in 2009, Kepler orbits the sun every 371 days. As it travels, Kepler keeps itself pointed at a single patch of sky. Sensors monitor the brightness of more than 150,000 stars simultaneously, looking for telltale drops in intensity that could indicate orbiting planets. The telescope is 15.3 feet long (4.7 meters) and weighed 2,230 pounds (1,052 kilograms) on Earth. A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launched Kepler on March 7, 2009. At the heart of the telescope is an array of 42 camera sensors specifically designed to detect alien planets passing in front of their stars. Our solar system lies between two major spiral arms of the Milky Way. Kepler’s planet search is conducted in a narrow wedge-shaped volume of space that stretches out ahead of us as we orbit the galaxy. Stars in the search volume are therefore at about the same distance from the center of the galaxy as we are. Kepler monitors more than 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. The entire Milky Way contains an estimated 200 billion to 400 billion stars. As of September 2012, Kepler had flagged more than 2,300 planet candidates. The vast majority still need to be confirmed by follow-up observations, but mission scientists have said they expect at least 80 percent of the telescope's finds to end up being the real deal. MORE: www.space.com/17383-kepler-planet-hunting-nasa-telescope-infographic.html?cmpid=514648_20140606_25484406
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Post by auntym on Jul 17, 2015 12:12:54 GMT -6
www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/07/search-for-double-sunsets-the-undetected-twin-planets-of-the-milky-way.html Kepler-16: A Planet Orbiting Two Stars NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers a World Orbiting Two StarsKepler-16: A Planet Orbiting Two Stars Uploaded on Sep 15, 2011 NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers a World Orbiting Two Stars The existence of a world with a double sunset, as portrayed in the film Star Wars more than 30 years ago, is now scientific fact. NASA's Kepler mission has made the first unambiguous detection of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting two stars -- 200 light-years from Earth. Unlike Star Wars' Tatooine, Kepler-16b is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it. "This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life," Kepler principal investigator William Borucki said. "Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars. This milestone discovery confirms a theory that scientists have had for decades but could not prove until now." A research team led by Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., used data from the Kepler space telescope, which measures dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, to search for transiting planets. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet. kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=152
MORE: www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/07/search-for-double-sunsets-the-undetected-twin-planets-of-the-milky-way.html
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Post by auntym on Apr 13, 2016 15:14:14 GMT -6
www.openminds.tv/scientist-research-whether-extraterrestrials-are-responsible-for-kepler-mystery/35265 Scientists research whether extraterrestrials are responsible for Kepler mysteryPosted by: Alejandro Rojas / www.openminds.tv/author/alejandro October 14, 2015 Kepler Telescope (Credit: NASA/JPL) The Kepler Space Telescope has spotted a star with peculiar characteristics that have some scientists speculating as to whether the anomalies could be the result of an extraterrestrial civilization. Kepler’s mission is to survey stars to determine if they have planets around them. As has been covered in many news stories, the telescope has found an abundance of planets, more than many thought would be out there. Furthermore, many of these planets exhibit characteristics that make them candidates for possibly harboring life. One of the ways the telescope is able to determine if a star has a planet is by looking for periodic dimming of the star’s light. This typically indicates that there is something passing in front of the star, and if it happens at a regular interval, then it is probably a planet. This is similar to how the Earth may make the light from the Sun dim every 365 days from the perspective of an observer far out in space. However, one star in particular, named KIC 8462852, shows a dimming pattern that is unusual, and indicates, according to an article in The Atlantic, “a big mess of matter circling the star.” www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-most-interesting-star-in-our-galaxy/410023/Kepler looked at over 150,000 stars, and KIC 8462852 is the only one that shows this strange pattern. The strange pattern was discovered by citizen scientists that belong to a group called Planet Hunters. The group was formed to help sift through the massive amount of data obtained by Kepler. In 2011, members of the Planet Hunter group tagged the KIC 8462852 as “interesting” and “bizarre.” Since then, Tabetha Boyajian, a postdoc at Yale who oversees Planet Hunters, has taken a closer look and recently posted a paper on her findings. arxiv.org/pdf/1509.03622v1.pdfBoyajian reviewed a number of different scenarios as to what may be happening to cause the strange dimming pattern, but found all but one to be “wanting.” This one potentially plausible explanation is the possibility that a different star had passed nearby and dragged along with it a bunch of comets. This explanation would be rare and it would be coincidental that it happened while we were watching. However, according to The Atlantic, Boyajian admits “her recent paper only reviews ‘natural’ scenarios. She told The Atlantic, there were “other scenarios” she was considering. Jason Wright, an astronomer from Penn State University, is also looking at alternative scenarios, including the extraterrestrial one. He is working on publishing an article on this theory. “When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright told The Atlantic. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.” Researchers have suggested before that unusual dimming patterns of stars may not only detect planets, but possibly advanced extraterrestrial structures, or as The Atlantic calls them, “technological artifacts orbiting other stars.” Wright says KIC 8462852’s strange light patterns are consistent with a “swarm of megastructures.” Wright and Boyajian plan on further researching KIC 8462852 to unlock its mystery and determine whether or not an extraterrestrial civilization exists there. They have teamed up with Andrew Siemion, the Director of the SETI Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and are working on a proposal to use a radio dish to attempt to listen in on KIC 8462852. The team will be listening for radio waves that exhibit advanced technology. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be left to day dream about massive space colonies and huge spacecraft ferrying alien inhabits to and fro. www.openminds.tv/scientist-research-whether-extraterrestrials-are-responsible-for-kepler-mystery/35265
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Post by swamprat on May 10, 2016 13:21:57 GMT -6
NASA's Kepler Mission Announces Largest Collection of Planets Ever Discovered May 10, 2016
NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.
“This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.”
Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.
"Before the Kepler space telescope launched, we did not know whether exoplanets were rare or common in the galaxy. Thanks to Kepler and the research community, we now know there could be more planets than stars,” said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters. "This knowledge informs the future missions that are needed to take us ever-closer to finding out whether we are alone in the universe."
Kepler captures the discrete signals of distant planets – decreases in brightness that occur when planets pass in front of, or transit, their stars – much like the May 9 Mercury transit of our sun. Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system more than two decades ago, researchers have resorted to a laborious, one-by-one process of verifying suspected planets.
This latest announcement, however, is based on a statistical analysis method that can be applied to many planet candidates simultaneously. Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey and lead author of the scientific paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, employed a technique to assign each Kepler candidate a planet-hood probability percentage – the first such automated computation on this scale, as previous statistical techniques focused only on sub-groups within the greater list of planet candidates identified by Kepler.
"Planet candidates can be thought of like bread crumbs,” said Morton. “If you drop a few large crumbs on the floor, you can pick them up one by one. But, if you spill a whole bag of tiny crumbs, you're going to need a broom. This statistical analysis is our broom."
In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.
"They say not to count our chickens before they're hatched, but that's exactly what these results allow us to do based on probabilities that each egg (candidate) will hatch into a chick (bona fide planet)," said Natalie Batalha, co-author of the paper and the Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “This work will help Kepler reach its full potential by yielding a deeper understanding of the number of stars that harbor potentially habitable, Earth-size planets -- a number that's needed to design future missions to search for habitable environments and living worlds.”
Of the nearly 5,000 total planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler. Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. For four years, Kepler monitored 150,000 stars in a single patch of sky, measuring the tiny, telltale dip in the brightness of a star that can be produced by a transiting planet. In 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will use the same method to monitor 200,000 bright nearby stars and search for planets, focusing on Earth and Super-Earth-sized.
Ames manages the Kepler missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system, with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:
www.nasa.gov/kepler
For briefing materials from Tuesday’s media teleconference where the new group of planets was announced, visit:
www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/briefingmaterials160510 -end-
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Post by swamprat on Jul 7, 2018 8:03:01 GMT -6
"It's about to run out of fuel..."
Maybe Musk can run over and refuel it.....
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Post by swamprat on Oct 31, 2018 12:07:27 GMT -6
R.I.P. KeplerNASA retires Kepler spacecraft after planet-hunter runs out of fuelTelescope spotted thousands of worlds beyond the Solar System during nine years of observations.
by Alexandra Witze 30 October 2018
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which discovered thousands of planetsbeyond the Solar System, has died at the age of nine.
The agency announced on 30 October that Kepler had run out of fuel and ceased its scientific mission. Before its demise, the telescope had downloaded all the data it had collected to mission control.
“It was the little spacecraft that could,” says Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “It always did everything we asked of it, and more.”
With Kepler, “we have shown there are more planets than stars in this Galaxy”, says William Borucki, a now-retired space scientist who came up with the idea for the spacecraft.
Searching for starlight The hard-working telescope soared into space aboard a Delta II rocket in March 2009. For four years, Kepler stared at more than 150,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, watching for flickers of starlight. From those tiny fluctuations, Kepler scientists deduced when planets were passing across the face of the stars as seen from Earth, temporarily dimming their light.
Mechanical failures hindered Kepler’s ability to orient itself in space in 2013. So NASA came up with a plan called K2 that directed the probe to look at a narrow slice of the sky aligned with the plane of the Solar System’s planets. The spacecraft’s renewed life enabled researchers to continue discovering planets, as well as to study nearby bright stars.
Between them, the Kepler and K2 missions discovered at least 2,681 confirmed planets. Among those are Kepler-186f, an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of its star, and Kepler-22b, one of many that turned out to be between the size of Earth and Neptune. Planets the size of Kepler-22b aren’t found in the Solar System, but they’re common throughout the Milky Way.
Nearly 2,900 further potential planets spotted by Kepler await confirmation.
NASA’s planet-hunting days aren’t over, however. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which launched in April, has already spotted dozens of potential distant worlds.
www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07247-7
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