Kepler Mission |
Kepler Mission |
Sep 24 2005, 04:23 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 3-July 04 From: Chicago, IL Member No.: 91 |
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/ |
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Aug 16 2009, 01:52 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
I'm not sure what you mean by "resolvable," Steve. It's not like we're able to resolve a star disk image with a transit visible as a blotted-out circle within it. But I would imagine that the "resolution" in this regard would be the same as Kepler's overall ability to detect a planetary transit. A moon would have to be the minimum size necessary for Kepler to detect it, all by itself, as a transit event. So if Kepler can't detect the dimming of a star's light caused by the transit of a Callisto-sized planet, it ought not be able to detect the additional dimming that would occur with a Callisto-sized moon as it would appear in the first frame of 'squid's excellent illustration. And also, therefore, ought not be able to tell the difference between the first and second frames.
As I understand it, Kepler can detect down to about an Earth-sized planet, correct? Then I would have to think that the smallest gas giant moon it might detect would have to be at least as large as the Earth. Another very interesting thing, though -- any planetary body with a ring system will block more or less of a star's light depending on the angle the ring plane presents to the viewer. I can well imagine that some percentage of the planets Kepler will discover may indeed have ring systems, and that these ring systems may not always present the same angle to us here on Earth during every single transit. It will be very, very interesting to see how fast the investigators suspect they're seeing ring systems in some of their results... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Aug 16 2009, 07:40 AM
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#3
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 87 Joined: 17-May 08 Member No.: 4114 |
As I understand it, Kepler can detect down to about an Earth-sized planet, correct? Then I would have to think that the smallest gas giant moon it might detect would have to be at least as large as the Earth. Earths in both size and orbital period, meaning only three transits over the Kepler mission. With more transits, you can pull smaller planets out of the noise. The Kepler site has some information http://kepler.nasa.gov/sci/basis/sizes.html |
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