Kepler Mission Options

[imran]

This NASA Discovery mission is to be launched in June 2008 and will search for Earth-size and smaller planets. Launch was originally scheduled in 2007 but delayed by 8 months due to "funding constraints".

Here's the official web site:
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

I'm extremely excited. But there's no way to detect the composition of the atmosphere, right?

[Greg Hullender]

But there's no way to detect the composition of the atmosphere, right?

That came up in the press conference, and the answer is that Kepler can't do that, but some of the future missions being proposed would be able to.

By the way, in case anyone missed it, this is what a Jovian planet looks like when you have four transits to work with. Had this been Earth and the Sun, the transit (the big drop) would have been about 2/3 the depth of the occultation (the little drop). So, yes, Earth-like planets should be detectable, but it's going to be close.

Something else interesting from the conference and some of the links was that the light curves of the variable stars are often unlike anything in the literature. Apparently the atmospheric noise has been hiding significant behavior. This complicates finding planets, of course, since their models for spotting variable stars have to be reworked.

--Greg

[stevesliva]

ustrax's couple writeups were extremely interesting.

I thought it was cool that the warm Spitzer was mentioned as an observatory likely to follow up on new discoveries. I love it when old missions come in handy.

[Marz]

ustrax's couple writeups were extremely interesting.

I have some questions, if anyone can answer them.

1. Kepler's mission is only 3.5 years, barely enough time to confirm it's own initial discoveries. It sounds likely that the mission can be extended, so what is the expected longevity of the mission (assuming funding is not the problem)?

2. From the mission website: "Expected Results:

From transits of terrestrial planets in one year orbits:

About 50 planets if most are the same size as Earth (R~1.0 Re) and none larger,
About 185 planets if most have a size of R~1.3 Re,
About 640 planets if most have a size of R~2.2 Re,
About 12% with two or more planets per system. "

-- would these expected numbers scale linearly with mission extensions (i.e. would another 4 years of observing double these numbers)? Or is Kepler's field of view fixed to one region, so the sample set is difficult to change, and if this is the case, would most new planets found be longer orbital periods?

3. "Stellar evolution models are used to estimate the mass, radius and metalicity of the parent star"
-- how reliable are these models? Is there any way to directly determine these values, or does it require an instrument like the Terrestrial Planet Finder?

4. For gas giants found within a habital zone of the star, would it be possible to search for large moons with either Kepler or astrometry of the gas giant using ground-based instruments?