Kepler Mission Options

[dilo]

Sorry for silly question, why I still cannot see >1000 Kepler planets on any public Exoplanet database like following ones?
http://exoplanets.org/
http://exoplanet.eu/index.php
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/
Perhaps because they still unconfirmed "candidates" or what else?
Moreover, I see lot of posts containing data/plots with these candidates, where can I find original source?

[centsworth_II]

....still unconfirmed "candidates" or what else?

That seems to be what the third site you link is saying in a March 7, 2011 news release.
"All of Kepler's candidate planets await verification from ground-based observatories."

[dilo]

Thanks, centsworth_II, I missed it... in the meantime, I found also the candidates list:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/candidates/

[Hungry4info]

Moreover, I see lot of posts containing data/plots with these candidates, where can I find original source?

One could just look through the paper that listed all 1,235 planet candidates, their radii, and the radii of their host stars...
http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.0541

[Rob Pinnegar]

I think a star with 80 times the mass of the sun but only one ten-thousandth the luminosity just isn't trying very hard.

Dahhh!!! I meant 80 Jupiter masses, of course. This has been fixed, for what it's worth.

[ngunn]

I've been similarly confused many times. Earth mass Jupiter mass and Solar mass are all regularly used as units for exoplanets and brown dwarfs. They're on a par with 'an area the size of Wales'. How many people actually know the conversions between them? It's a pain. Let's stick to kg.

[AndyG]

300 Earths is near enough a Jupiter, and 1000 Jupiters just about 1 Sol. It seems to me that Jupiter is reasonably well-placed for defining the relative masses of BDs, smaller stars and giant exoplanets.

The problem with kg is with those pesky scientific notations, and the ease of which you can mentally miscalculate by a magnitude (or two)!

Andy

[Habitable Zoner]

As most have heard by now, there have been at least two interesting Kepler announcements at the AAS 218 meeting, one dealing with the abundance of multi-planet systems, the other an announcement of the hot super-earth Kepler 10c. The press releases are available on the Kepler website. The first announcement, "Kepler’s Astounding Haul of Multiple Planet Systems," has a very cool animation showing the systems. The second, "Kepler-10c and a New Method to Validate Planets," discusses the Blender technique of validating candidates. Archives of the presentations, including slides, are available on the site.

[Tom Tamlyn]

That seems to be what the third site you link is saying in a March 7, 2011 news release.
"All of Kepler's candidate planets await verification from ground-based observatories."

"All our candidates is belong to ...."

TTT (sorry)

[Greg Hullender]

This article (refered to in the links above) has an excellent account of what they do to try to validate a candidate planet.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1105/1105.4647v1.pdf

I feel I have a much better understanding of why it takes them so long, but it also sounds like (from this and some of the other papers) they've got the hang of it now, so I expect we'll see results coming more quickly now.

But there's some GREAT stuff here!

--Greg

[Syrinx]

Not strictly Kepler related, but MIT recently hosted distinguished speakers who each gave short presentations on the topic of exoplanets. The presentations were recorded and are available for streaming.

http://amps-web.amps.ms.mit.edu/public/EAP...oPlanets-may27/

There are four videos, each about an hour in duration. I've watched the first two. The second video ("Stars and Planets Within our Reach") features Geoff Marcy's opinions on TPF / the decadal survey / NASA in general, and also Sara Seager's CubeSat program "ExoplanetSat" of which I was not previously aware.

[Syrinx]

Mission Manager Update arrived today:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/n...m-20110617.html

The health of the spacecraft and photometer, the instrument used to measure changes in the brightness of distant stars, is excellent and has recorded more than two months of routine operations in this quarter. The observing efficiency in Quarter 9, which is April through June 2011, has been above 97 percent due to two very efficient monthly science data downlinks in April and May-- 16.6 hours and 15.2 hours, the quickest yet! Coupled with no unplanned breaks in collecting science data, it has been a strong quarter so far. [...]

performance of Ka band downlink between the spacecraft and the Deep Space Network ground stations has been excellent. Greater than 99 percent of science data reaches the ground on the first attempt. [...]

in May, the team completed a file uplink to the spacecraft to mitigate the root causes of the anomalies encountered during Quarter 8 operations. [...]

To date, the downlink rate operates at the maximum Ka band rate of 4.3 Mbps. [...]

The latest estimates show the spacecraft is equipped with enough propellant for the thrusters to last for an additional eight years.

[Drkskywxlt]

Eight years!?!

Awesome!

[nprev]

Yes, that's exciting news! We should have a VERY good dataset by end of mission, and ultimately a much more accurate estimate of planetary population than we'd hoped.

Good times, good times.

[ElkGroveDan]

Here's to our Kepler and eight more years of successful Kepling!