Kepler Mission Options

[nprev]

Article titled "The Big Reveal"?

I dunno, man. I've personally framed Kepler's primary science return as a statistical sampling that'll give us a degree of insight into the frequency of occurrence of planetary systems (within some major constraints such as orbital plane alignment with Earth & relatively small orbital radii for observed objects, of course.) That's gonna take time.

This might be a cool one-off early discovery of some sort...but I hope the team isn't setting itself up for later PR problems by elevating expectations beyond what is reasonable & prudent. We've seen that happen before.

[Hungry4info]

Five new exoplanets. 4 are larger than Jupiter. 1 is Neptune-sized. The relevant presentation just ended. 100 candidate planets in Kepler data so far. Thousands of candidate variable stars. Sub-stellar sized stars were expected to be prohibitively variable, but it didn't turn out to be that bad. Exoplanet sizes: 4 R_e, 15 R_e, 17 R_e, 19 R_e.

Kepler naming scheme.
4b, 5b, 6b 7b, 8b.
(3 planets alreay in field, so it's respect to those scientists).

Kepler-8 b Rossiter-McLaughlin effect measured. Prograde.
Kepler-4 b -> The Neptune.
Kepler-7 b very low density planet.

http://www.starstryder.com/2010/01/04/kepler-first-science/ We're told to expect something on arXiv.

[NGC3314]

Live blog from AAS: hot Jupiters and hot but icy giants, plus more than one case of a "planet" that has to be hotter than its star (and which doesn't fit as either a degenerate or main-sequence star). Sounds of discovery: "Hmm - that's funny...

[Greg Hullender]

Nice link. Interesting how much that person looks like you. :-) [You meaning Hungry, not NGC]

I'll be interested to hear what they make of the super hot Jupiters -- the ones significantly brighter than the stars they orbit. Deuterium burning was my first thought, but I thought I read that that phase doesn't last very long.

--Greg

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/tableofdiscoveries/

A very useful table.

Just look at the orbital period - all planets have orbital periods between 3 and 4 days. And the surface temperature is very high

EDIT : Another link! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/n...exoplanets.html

[Syrinx]

Slides:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/m...conference.html

[Syrinx]

Check out this slide:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/414914m...discoveries.jpg

It puts the newly discovered planets in a familiar context.

It says all five planets were discovered from the first 43 days of data. Kepler has been observing for, what, 300 days at this point?

Also, irks me that it pins "habitable" as requiring the same orbital distance as Earth. An orbital distance of 1 AU is neither necessary nor sufficient for habitability. We'll find plenty of non-habitable planets at 1 AU, and we'll also find plenty of habitable planets outside 1 AU.

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

With no fear of being a false prophet - I predict that this data will be analyzed for several decades at least.

[remcook]

"It says all five planets were discovered from the first 43 days of data. Kepler has been observing for, what, 300 days at this point?"

It's the confirmation by ground-based radial velocity measurements that takes most of the time.

[Stu]

Liking those slides. Very high quality.

[Syrinx]

It's the confirmation by ground-based radial velocity measurements that takes most of the time.

Rightfully so. I should have been more clear. My comment was intended to note that the discoveries presented today are just the first bushel load from a fruit tree ripe for the plucking.

[infocat13]

Nice link. Interesting how much that person looks like you. :-) [You meaning Hungry, not NGC]

I'll be interested to hear what they make of the super hot Jupiters -- the ones significantly brighter than the stars they orbit. Deuterium burning was my first thought, but I thought I read that that phase doesn't last very long.

--Greg

its my understanding that first discovery will be planets close in.perhaps super Jupiter's with exomoons close in towards there red dwarf primary's might be next.lastly planets with orbital periods of one year or more might become known to us near the end of mission.

edit
ooops was trying to quote Zvezdichko post from the previous page

[Paolo]

There are lots of Kepler-related papers on ArXiv today
http://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph.EP/recent

[Syrinx]

Thank you for the link Paolo. There goes the rest of my day .

"The Kepler Follow-up Observation Program"

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.0352v1.pdf

CODE

Total KOIs 177 From targets mkepler <= 15 in quarters 0 and 1

Type                          Number
Planet                        5                 Good rv orbit matches light curve.
Possible planet               52                Radial velocity variation is small enough for a planetary mass companion.
Recon                         65                Still under reconnaissance. No type assigned.
Double lined spectrum         5
Stellar companion             8                 RV variations indicate a stellar mass companion.
Triple system                 1                 Transit source is in a triple (or greater) system.
Background eclipsing binary   11
Fast rotator                  13                Star is rotating too fast for very precise velocities.
Withdrawn                     14                Withdrawn by TCERT after re-examination of light curve
Unsuitable                    3                 Featureless spectrum unsuitable for RV work or no star apparent at target location

Quarters 0 and 1 must be the first 43 days of returned data.

[maschnitz]

Yeah, definitely some fascinating reading in here. Thanks Paolo.

Q0/Q1 is defined as "Q0 consisting of 9.7 days of data taken during commissioning and Q1 consisting of 33.5 days of data taken before the first quarterly roll of the spacecraft" in this summary paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0268

Good overview on oscillating, pulsating, and eclipsing stars in that one too.

Another interesting paper is the one where they model the star as a triaxial ellipsoid shape (think "like Haumea") in order to nail down the light curve better:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0413