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A news item involving Kepler space telescope was featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the In the news section on 8 March 2009.

Untitled This article uses American English dialect and spelling. According to the WP:ENGVAR, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Pending Announcement Should Be Added To Status Section of Article

Recent news reports say that the lead scientist of the Kepler Mission will be announcing some "surprising" preliminary findings next month (January 2010). This should be quoted and cited in the article.

63.254.252.154 (talk) 02:04, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

'Status' section paragraphs reversed

I reversed the position of the two paragraphs in the 'status' section so that the one refering to the most recent events comes first. This is in line with good practices of journalism that share the most pertinent information first and the background information later.

205.240.0.43 (talk) 19:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Kepler name change

First of all, thanks to all those who created and contributed to this page.

I would like all those concerned to consider changing of the name (moving) this page. Speaking for the Kepler project, the official project name is the Kepler Mission. The project does use either the name Kepler Space Observatory or Kepler Space Telescope.

Let me explain. The term space observatory is often used to describe multiple user facilities. Kepler is not a facility, but rather a principal investigator led mission supported by a science team or science working group. Unlike a facility, which can and is used for many kinds of investigations, Kepler has a singular purpose, to detect Earth-size and smaller planets.

Likewise, it is not a space telescope. We have been very careful not to use this term, since it conjures up the image of the Hubble Space Telescope, both in cost and capability. The HST is an entirely separate class of instrument. Kepler cannot do any of the things HST is capable of doing. Rather Kepler does one very unique thing. Precision photometry. In addition, we never use the term telescope primarily because we don't want people and espically the media to think that we will be producing pictures or images of any planets we detect. Thus we have always and only referred to the instrument as the photometer or Kepler photometer.

Being a novice at Misplaced Pages, I would like to ask one of the Kepler authors/supporters out there to conduct a poll if appropriate and then do whatever it takes to rename (move) the page to Kepler Mission.

Thank you Dave Koch Kepler Mission, Deputy Principal Investiagtor

Finding planets and life

I think that Kepler should find hundreds of planets in a four year period. Kepler is probably the first technique to search for subterrestrial planets around normal stars. Kepler is more promising mission than Corot since it will find more, frequenter, and sooner planets. If Kepler finds the Earth-like planet, it will study the atmosphere and surface chemistry to look for presence of life; taking place for Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, which it was canceled due to budget cuts. BlueEarth 19:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Until we find alot more, We have alredy found an earth-size planet around another star. Kepler may especially study the atmosphere of the planet too. – Fbs. 13 17:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

No, Gliese 581c is NOT earth-sized (it is at least 50% larger, and probably much more). Read article that yourself linked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.77.65.166 (talk) 22:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Extrasolar moons

I think that Kepler should search for moons around extrasolar planets. For example, I hope that Kepler should find a Earth-like moon around HD 28185 b and look for presence of life on this moon. BlueEarth 19:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it's probably much more likely for life to be found on a gas giant moon, because these types planets seem to be (with our limited evidence) more common in habitable zones. But the current detection methods probably don't allow us to find these moons (yet?) because the parent planets are far smaller and far dimmer than stars. Wouter Lievens (talk) 11:20, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

In theory, Kepler could spot a sufficiently large moon (if near Earth-sized gas giant moons exist) when it transits the star rather than when it transits the gas giant. In practice, I guess that data mining for the blip in the light curve would be considerably harder since the transits would not be separated by a uniform period, and for moon-planet distances of a few hundred thousand km there would be substantial overlap between the much stronger planet-sun transit and the moon-sun transit. Willhsmit (talk) 22:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Kepler will stare at a single field (in Cygnus/Lyra). It will not observe HD 28185 b. Timb66 (talk) 12:45, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Kepler's 15 minute integration may wash out the fine timing needed to detect a moon. But follow-up studies might. In any case, a tidally locked planet cannot have a stable moon. Any planet whose orbital period is less than some value (I think it's about 130 days) should become tidally locked in a few billion years, so the issue is moot for really close in planets. Vegasprof (talk) 11:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Budget cuts and fiscal problems

How and what is budget cut and fiscal problem for Kepler Mission? BlueEarth 02:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, this section (Status) currently mentions a total of 12 months of delays incurred in 2006. Launch occurred in 2009...can someone account for the other 2 years? Were there additional delays or was it originally slated to go up in 2008? Steve Hyland (talk) 09:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

What could be improved before launch?

Is there something that could or should still be added into the article? Or is there anything else that could be improved? The launch is getting near and the article will soon get a billion hits, so it would be nice make all possible improvements before that. Offliner (talk) 21:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I've added a field of view picture, feel free to move if needed. Noonehasthisnameithink (talk) 23:29, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that the structure of the article could be improved. The "Objectives"-section includes much information that doesn't have anything to do with the missions objectives. Also, the "Kepler mission in a nutshell"-section should be rewritten, and maybe have a different headline. Just my two cents. 19:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Izbitzer (talk • contribs)

The nutshell section has been rewritten. I'm not sure what to do with the section divisions. "Objectives and methods" sounds a bit clumsy - maybe we should separate the two? Then again, the section also includes material that doesn't have much to do with either objectives and methods (such as the probability discussion.) Offliner (talk) 18:42, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

It's much better now, I think! To me, it's fine as it is. Izbitzer (talk) 21:37, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

A Nutshell Description of the Kepler Mission

Why? The Kepler Mission is a NASA Discovery Program for detecting potentially life-supporting planets around other stars. All of the extrasolar planets detected so far by other projects are giant planets, mostly the size of Jupiter and bigger. Kepler is poised to find planets 30 to 600 times less massive than Jupiter. How? By a method known as the transit method of planet finding. When we see a planet pass in front of its parent star it blocks a small fraction of the light from that star.When that happens, we say that the planet is transiting the star. If we see repeated transits at regular times, we have discovered a planet! From the brightness change we can tell the planet size. From the time between transits, we can tell the size of the planet's orbit and estimate the planet's temperature.These qualities determine possibilities for life on the planet. What? The Kepler satellite has a 0.95-meter diameter telescope that is a photometer having a field of view a bit over 10 degrees square (and area of sky the size of about two open hands). It is designed to continuously and simultaneously monitors brightnesses of 100,000 stars brighter than 14th magnitude in the constellations Cygnus & Lyra. To detect an Earth-size planet, the photometer must be able to sense a drop in brightness of only 1/100 of a percent. This is akin to sensing the drop in brightness of a car's headlight when a fruitfly moves in front of it! The photometer must be spacebased to obtain this precision. When? Launch of Kepler: Spring, 2009 122.168.210.184 (talk) 17:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Where is this from? Sounds like it has been directly copied from somewhere, and in that case it would probably be a copyright violation. Offliner (talk) 20:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Our helpful anonymous contributor has indeed copied the entire text, sans formatting, of "A Nutshell Description of the Kepler Mission" from the Kepler Mission website. As it comes from a federal organization website, it should be in the public domain, but if we decide to use any of it, we should still cite this webpage specifically as the source of information, whether or not we quote excerpts of it. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

User:Hairy Dude integrated the text to the article using his own words. Big thanks to him. Offliner (talk) 16:06, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Loss of Observing Time

What is the exact amount of time (approximately one day a month, it says) lost because of the necessity to rotate the spacecraft in order to transmit data? Vegasprof (talk)

"The nominal timeline has science breaks of 42 hours at the quarterly rolls and 26 hours for the intervening monthly downloads. The quarterly breaks require extra time because a small post-roll pointing adjustment is required to achieve the precise science attitude assumed when generating the target apertures." quote from p. 5, "Kepler Science Operations", Michael R. Haas et.al., 4 Jan 2010, Submitted to: Astrophysical Journal Letters http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.0437v1.pdf) Bealevideo (talk)

Expand detection time

These could be reported after only a few months of operation. Smaller planets, and planets further from their sun will take longer, and discovering planets comparable to Earth is expected to take three years or longer.

There's some good information floating around that goes into this with a bit more detail. It can easily be expanded. The first results are expected to be released at a meeting in January 2010. Viriditas (talk) 09:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Anything else that might cause a decrease in apparent magnitude?

Under "Mission Details" there's a good mention that the view won't be obscured by Kuiper Belt objects or the asteroid belt. If possible it should also address the question that came to mind for me: Is there anything other than an extrasolar planet that is at all likely to cause a 0.01% decrease in apparent magnitude of one of the stars being tracked? Tempshill (talk) 17:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Well it seems to me that if our understanding of the emptiness of space is correct, anything transiting the star would need to be either close to us or close to them. That said, if the object makes 3 passes with consistent periods, that ought to pretty well imply that the object is in orbit around the distant star. Tomfelker (talk) 19:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If there is an eclipsing binary star, that just happens to be nearly exactly on the line-of-sight to the candidate foreground star, it could generate a light dip when one of the binary pair eclipses the other. In fact, Kepler has reportedly detected quite a few such background eclipsing binary "false positives". Some were eliminated just based on astrometric data from Kepler itself, without resorting to (time-consuming) followup radial-velocity data. See also: Kepler Astrometric results, http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0305 Bealevideo (talk) 23:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

FOV

The article says the field of view has a diameter of about 12 degrees, but it also says it's equivalent to two hands at arm's length. I've found some sources that a fist at arms length is 10 degrees wide, and thumb to pinky of an outstretched hand is 20 degrees. Granted those are approximate measures, but it doesn't seem to add up, especially if you assume the two hands are stretched open, instead of fingers together or in a fist. Tomfelker (talk) 19:24, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

POV

Article has many budgetary request weasel words, be sure to kill them or force citations. 140.254.47.103 (talk) 01:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Could you point out an example of what you mean? Offliner (talk) 07:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the cost?

I didnt see the cost of the entire mission. Im probably just stupid and didnt see it in the page but im just curious cause it said somewhere that it was low cost? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.92.150.224 (talk) 01:00, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It's in there, last sentence in mission details, estimated at $600 million. Noonehasthisnameithink (talk) 02:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Image alignment

I think every image on the article should be right-aligned (per WP:MOS). Sandwitching text between two images should also be avoided. I've tried to align all pictures to the right a couple of times, but people keep aligning them back to the left. Offliner (talk) 07:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Solstices and equinoxes?

Both the graphic and the Mission Operations section mention the satellite going through seasons. This doesn't make any sense to me. Its not explained anywhere.--eean (talk) 14:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The seasons don't have any direct meaning for the satellite, I think what's meant is just that those are the times chosen for the spacecraft to rotate to point the solar array more directly at the sun. If you didn't rotate the spacecraft, half the year your solar array would be pointed away from the sun. -Tim 162.18.172.11 (talk) 17:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It also rotates the heat radiator away from the sun, so that the spacecraft can regulate its temperature. The whole spacecraft is rotated by 90 degrees, so that the photometer is also rotated, and each star will map onto a different section of the photometer. This explains the pattern of lines in the photometer, and also why it is rotated 4 times a year. The first rotation will be around the 18th of June, i.e. just before the equinox on Earth. Martin451 (talk) 02:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

photo of the spacecraft itself

Is there a photo (presumably a public domain NASA one) of the spacecraft itself? --WhiteDragon (talk) 15:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Meaning

What is meant by "co-added on board for 15 minutes." in the sentences "The CCDs are read out every 3 seconds and co-added on board for 15 minutes". of the article. what is co-added? on board?
Ayrenz (talk) 09:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Kepler has its own computer. It is my understanding (I have no access to any information that is not public) that sending data for each of the 94617600 pixels for every three seconds would be too much. Therefore (again, my understanding) that they report how much light has fallen on each pixel over a 15 minute interval. This is the sum of the results from 300 three second intervals, and that sum is computed by an on-board computer. This means that timing of transits will be less accurate. Vegasprof (talk) 10:26, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Known extrasolar planets in Kepler's field of view.

Section content moved to Kepler Mission article page, new 'Exoplanets' section. Aldebaran66 (talk) 19:55, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice addition! — Aldaron • T/C 20:21, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Distance from Earth.

Would it be worth including the distance from Earth in either AU or light seconds. According to NASA on 2009-05-07 Kepler was 3.7 million miles (5.95 million km). It moves away at about 5.95/61 Gm a day, so the calculation is quite simple, but I can't do the wiki code. Martin451 (talk) 21:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a great idea. In fact, I'm surprised that this isn't a feature of the Infobox Space Telescope space telescope template]]. The location field doesn't quite do it. — Aldaron • T/C 22:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

How would you measure the distance from Earth? Along a straight line or along the orbit curve? Seems to me the best way to measure it would be in units of time (days or hours), e.g., trailing Earth by 23.2 hours. Egumtow (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC).

Image

Hello. I question the usefulness of this simage, as it shows what seems 4 dots on a blank square in which the axes' legend are illegible. BatteryIncluded (talk) 01:38, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's a common feature of thumbnails in Misplaced Pages. For example, almost all of the other images in the last sections article look like black rectangles with some blurry smears or splatters of dots. If you click in them, or the figure in question, you will find them perfectly legible and informative. — Aldaron • T/C 02:15, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, but I am familiar with the click function: The 'enlarged image' has illegible axes legends, so it is useless. Perhaps an interpretation of the chart would bring useful information? BatteryIncluded (talk) 03:37, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I find the legends to be fully legible. I do, however, find them to be incomprehensible. I can read what they say, but I don't have a clue what they're telling me. Nibios (talk) 18:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Tube design?

Can anyone explain why the tube is designed so that it widens to an objective that's wider than the opening at its narrowest point (where the corrector is located). The same true field of view and light gathering power could be achieved by tapering the other way; i.e. by having a smaller and thus much lighter mirror the diameter of the current corrector plate, and having a larger corrector plate the diameter of the current mirror. Is it an issue of keeping the harder to support corrector smaller? — Aldaron • T/C 23:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Having the aperture stop at the Schmidt corrector allows the field-of-view to be concentric with the center of curvature of the primary mirror, which allows you to use a spherical mirror (cheaper than a parabola). 162.18.172.11 (talk) 18:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC) Tim

Astrometry

It turns out that the Kepler telescope is accurate enough to be used for astrometry even though it was designed for photometry. A quote stating this which was taken from the abstracts of the upcoming presentations in january, has been removed twice from the lead for no good reason. 86.167.195.159 (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

The quote is interesting and relevant information, but I agree that it's too detailed for the lead. So I split 'status' and 'results', and put it in the results section. LouScheffer (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Additional results?

Results covering the first six weeks of study were as you all know published on january 4th this year. Does anyone know when additional results covering longer periods of time will be published? Thanks -- 81.224.247.87 (talk) 18:49, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

The following article provides one possible answer: "Telescope team may be allowed to sit on exoplanet data" (NASA panel agrees to Kepler team request to withhold key observations.) http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100414/full/news.2010.182.html?s=news_rss 69.170.34.18 (talk) 17:02, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

From Manager's Update: 05.03.2010 "By late Fall, It is expected that this work will provide sufficient evidence that several candidates are actually planets rather than some other astrophysical process that only mimics planets. After all the results are reviewed by the Kepler Science Team and by peers, announcement of the new discoveries will be made this winter." http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/mmu/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=39 Bealevideo (talk) 16:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Where is KOI-74b?

KOI-74b and the other one is gone. If I wanted information on those 2 KOI objects and I do not remember the number, first place to look is Kepler Mission page. I think it needs to be mentioned on this page. Thanks, Marasama (talk) 20:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

There are many KOI not just those. I don't think they will have those. Look on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia. I think they are in the unconfirmed section.Syntheticalconnections (talk) 17:02, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Released data sets and "the cat being out of the bag"

The quoted expression occurs I believe in this online Scientific American article. The actual data sets are also available online and this PR from NASA doesn't appear to be in the references. As I understand it the indications are that the first confirmation of a very rough magnitude of 1% of stars with roughly Earth sized planets is to be confirmed next year in the dataset. Perhaps it is not too early for this qualitative result to be mentioned with the appropriate sourcing. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 20:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Results Timetable Needed in Clear Common English

There is no section that clearly states (in simple English) when definitive results will come out, and on what anticipated schedule.

Misplaced Pages is a public use encyclopedia and where possible, it's articles should be written in a manner intelligible to the average reader. Scientific language may be used, but wherever possible this should be in parallel to writing that is easily understood by the average (non-scientist) reader.

Keep in mind that this is not merely a courtesy extended to non-scientists. Scientists are more likely to get funding (or see funding acquired for projects that they care about) when the public is able to understand and appreciate their research. Speaking in gibberish in public to non-scientists is a great way to miss funding opportunities. Not to mention being rather self-absorbed behavior.

The opening of this article is very good (clear, common English) but then entire sections are written only in "science-speak" with no care taken to translate what is being said to the average person.

So the article does not remain clear, section by section, to the general public. Not a good idea in a recession. Whatever is to follow the Kepler Mission suffers from this sort of self-absorption and elitism.

98.245.148.9 (talk) 19:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

You understand that the article is not written and maintained by Kepler Mission operations, right? If they don't announce a timetable, the article can't contain one.

In practice there's a lot of uncertainty around how long followup observations take to give reasonable confirmation of planets, especially when they're over-cautious about releasing preliminary results. Willhsmit (talk) 00:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you have any more specific areas in particular - beyond the schedule for announcements - that you think the article does a poor job of explaining?

Brainstorming, I guess that the nontechnical reader is less interested in the details of development, instruments and mission design - which would then be lower priorities for any readability enhancements - but should be able to easily learn things like: What can Kepler find? What can't it find (Planets significantly smaller than earth; significantly longer-period than Earth; planets outside its view or at the wrong angle, which means nearly all of the nearest planets; substantial info about the planet beyond orbit and size)? What has it found already? Maybe a motivating example for non-exoplanet capabilities like astroseismology? Willhsmit (talk) 00:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Dead nasa link

The dead link to a Nasa reference about the probability of a planetary transit, http://kepler.nasa.gov/Science/characteristicsOfTransits/ , has been restored from a Google cache to my website http://jwleaf.org/docs/probability-of-planetary-transit.html. I would like to substitute this link for the dead link but do not know how to do it. Maybe the dead link will be resolved by Nasa later anyway, but I don't mind if the missing page is linked from my website. The top of the restored page gives the origin and the fact that it was cached by Google. new user jwillisj — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwillisj (talk • contribs) 18:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Planetary table proposition

The table is far to large to fit on my screen (resolution: 1280x1024) and is very likely, too large to fit on most people's screens as well. As such I propose dropping the 'Inclination' and 'Orbital eccentricity'. This would reduce the size of the table while retaining the most important information about the discoveries. The other removed columns can then be discussed in the individual planetary pages. The list of extrasolar planets article can be used as a guide alternatively as well. --Xession (talk) 20:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not so sure, orbital eccentricity and inclination are just as important values as the rest, I'd be reluctant to remove them especially given that this page will become a useful resource for adding Kepler discoveries to general exoplanet lists like the one you mention.

On the other hand "Discovery method" is almost entirely redundant. All discoveries made by Kepler will be discovered by the Transit Method! The only one that isn't was a known exoplanet retrieved in the early science phase. That column could be removed with almost no trouble at all. ChiZeroOne (talk) 20:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

That is certainly true enough. Orbital Eccentricity is also wider than the values, could it possibly be shortened to just 'Orbital ecc.' instead? The 'Inclination' column could also be shortened. Obviously these are pure aesthetic complaints and not entirely important. In my opinion, it just looks bad, especially for such an important mission. Come March, there will be a massive flood of people looking at the page when they release most of the data so it seems important to make the page look the best as it possibly can. --Xession (talk) 20:52, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree, I don't like tables that extend past the page. But at the same time it's nice to have as much relevant information as possible. I've made the changes so it's a little bit better anyway.

As for the data release, that brings up another point. Given that it is anticipated this will include a large number of confirmed planets, and in general Kepler is expected to find large numbers over its mission, might it not be a better idea to have a separate list article to store Kepler's discoveries than hosting them here? That will stop the main mission article being taken over by a massive list. If we institute this now it will solve a lot of problems when the announcement comes. ChiZeroOne (talk) 22:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say that is almost a certain necessity eventually. For this page, the exoplanets the Kepler team labels as most notable would probably be appropriate to list on this page, moving all the others to a separate page. As a possible alternative, I would suggest a collapsible table with the full listing, so that they at least do not overwhelm this page. --Xession (talk) 00:07, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree with Xession a collapsible table with the full listing is a viable alternative. In my opinion is we separate the list into another article it will not get updated as much as now and the list is going to be more incomplete. Only when the list becomes so long, we can leave the most notables or the latest and the rest on a separate article. Quantanew (talk) 15:41, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Xession has the right idea regarding sorting criteria once the list of discoveries gets long enough to spin it out to its own page, but unfortunately there are accessibility issues with creating a collapsible table. It can produce gibberish for some users with screen readers and older browsers. Or at least be careful - that guideline section seems to have been updated since last I read it, and now recommends caution and checking the output with CSS/JavaScript disabled. I can do that simply enough if someone wants to generate a proposed implementation. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

So has any further consideration been put forth regarding the organization of the Kepler findings? The tremendous number will certainly warrant a new page. --Xession (talk) 00:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

5 Earth-like planet candidates

Kepler team announced discovering 5 Earth-size planet candidates in their respective habitable zones. I can't find any information about them, do we even have articles for them, what are they called? There was so much speculation about Gliese 581 g, yet no information is available on these 5 more Earth-like extrasolar candidate planets. --Hatteras (talk) 01:37, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK the Kepler team just released a listing of "1,235 extrasolar planet candidates, including 54 that may be in the Habitable zone" - the Main article has now been updated with this new information - as well as with several relevant references - perhaps these references may be of some help? Drbogdan (talk) 02:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, the main report on NASA Kepler web-site states " Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter." There seems to be no additional information on these 5 candidate planets, which is strange, because each of them is no less important than Gliese 581 g --Hatteras (talk) 02:26, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

That's because they are candidates, they have not even been confirmed yet, by definition not much is known about them. They don't have "Kepler" names because no one knows if they're even real yet! Have some patience.

Gliese 581 g is a "confirmed" planet (like the Kepler-11 planets), well, was until some other astronomers suggested otherwise. You cannot compare Gliese 581 g with these planet candidates because even for 581 g the evidence was (supposedly) a lot more substantial. ChiZeroOne (talk) 02:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Gliese 581 g is also unconfirmed. I know that they're candidates, but that doesn't mean that NASA can't tell us how many light-years these candidate exoplanets are away from Earth, for instance. --Hatteras (talk) 03:16, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Now it is unconfirmed, at the time it was announced it was believed to be confirmed and considered real because of convincing evidence. These planets are candidates, they could really be just Cosmic-ray strikes on the CCD for all we know at the moment. Apples and oranges. Yes it does mean they can't tell you, science is a competition and teams will try and beat others to the "prize" in any way they can, if they gave out detailed information on interesting candidates another team could make the confirmation and take the credit. ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:30, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I suppose your argument makes sense, the competitive spirit could be responsible for them not disclosing this information as of now. I know that Gliese 581 g was thought to be confirmed initially, too bad it's not a transiting planet. Anyway, let's hope that these extrasolar planets acquire legitimate confirmations quickly. I'm sure that I'm not the only one excited :) --Hatteras (talk) 04:32, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something, but what is so special about "earth-size" planets in the "Habitable Zone"? - are life forms more likely to arise, for some reason, on planets that are "earth-size"? - or less likely to arise, for some reason, on planets that are larger, or smaller, than "earth-size"? - I would think that any planet in the "Habitable Zone" would be equally likely to harbor life forms regardless of how close in size the planet might be to that of earth - simply by being in the "Habitable Zone" may be sufficient for the presence of life forms? - at least for life forms as we mostly know them? Drbogdan (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Well for one, it's exciting to find a planet that is Earth-like in the most dimensions possible, because we know for certain, that the dynamics of this planet allowed life to occur; maybe it would be most possible on a similar planet. Other factors go into it as well, such as the ability to keep a liquid core, which is thought to require a certain size planet, and in turn allows for a protective magnetosphere. You are entirely right however, in thinking that too much focus is placed on Earth-sized planets, when it's all too possible for a gas giant class planet to be in the habitable zone with habitable moons. In the end, it's easier to stick what is known now though, to limit speculation.--Xession (talk) 16:10, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions - yes, i agree with your thinking - and yes, you seem to understand my basic concern - that we might end up too narrow in how we do our searching - and perhaps, miss some really, really worthy discoveries - in any case - thanks again - and enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 21:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

It does actually matter that they are near Earth sized, for a variety of reasons. Firstly if they are small they would not be able to hold onto an atmosphere for long enough for life to evolve (this is the situation with Mars, no enough gravity to keep a dense atmosphere), so basically anything smaller than about Venus size isn't likely to have an atmosphere at that range from a star. Equally if they are too large, that can also cause problems, obviously there isn't likely to be life on gas giants (at least not anything we know could live there), but if you have a super-Earth sized planet many times bigger than Earth, it may not even have cooled down enough for life (the bigger a rocky planet, the longer it will stay molten after formation). There would also be intense gravity on large super-Earth's (above about 4 Earth-masses), which might make it difficult for larger lifeforms to evolve. --Hibernian (talk) 06:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

That idea about atmospheres, was thought to be true before we knew much about Titan, which is actually about 75% the size of Mars with an atmosphere 150% the thickness of ours, and strangely much past what is considered within the habitable zone. Some scientists have suggested more recently, that habitable zones may exist around some planets, such as Jupiter, which makes it possible for Io to have a molten core, and Europa to likely have a very large liquid ocean beneath a thick outer icy crust. Lastly, gravity certainly influences life forms greatly, but doesn't necessarily determine the possibility of life itself, so long as there is at least some amount of gravity to allow proto-lifeforms to travel. A larger terrestrial planet would likely have a warmer core which would likely delay the formation of life, but not necessarily prohibit it either. --Xession (talk) 06:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The idea about atmospheres is indeed to simplistic. Many factors are responsible for the thickness of a planetary/lunar atmosphere. Titan has such a thick atmosphere because it is extremely cold, around -180°C; if it were 16° cooler, the nitrogen in its atmosphere (98% of Titan's atmosphere is nitrogen) would precipitate. On the contrary, Mercury which is twice as massive as Titan has no atmosphere because it was blown away by the solar wind. Solar wind is also a probable reason why Mars lost its atmosphere: due to the lack of a magnetic field around the planet (its small core cooled down quickly) the atmosphere simply got blown away. When enough gas was blown away, the greenhouse effect stopped working and the water vapor and carbon dioxide froze, further reducing the surface pressure. So although gravity is an important player in predicting the composition of a planetary atmosphere distance from the star, amount of solar particles, initial composition of the atmosphere, state of the planetary core, volcanism on the planet itself etc. can significantly influence the end result. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.163.120.179 (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

If you notice, I already said that distance from the star was important for the atmosphere. Titan is not a good example, if it was at Earth's distance from the Sun it would quickly lose its atmosphere, it can only hold onto it out there in the extreme cold. For a planet to maintain a thick atmosphere in the warm inner areas of a solar system it must have sufficient gravity to hold onto it. Size does matter. --Hibernian (talk) 19:06, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The size of a planetary body does certainly matter. Titan is large enough to hold it's atmosphere on its own, however. Otherwise it would have long ago, lost the gases to Saturn, or the gases would have never accreted around Titan in the first place. If Titan was closer to the sun, and somehow was able to maintain a magnetosphere, it would likely be able to retain an atmosphere as well, albeit of a different composition than it currently has. As for the case with Mars, it is still not well understood. The best postulations I have read include some sort of large impact which cooled the surface to a point where the atmosphere lost stability and collapsed. Sometime after that, the core dwindled to the point where it could no longer maintain a magnetosphere and in the years since, solar wind has been stripping away the atmosphere. The process is extremely slow however and takes a very long time to make a large impact on an atmosphere; Venus is a case in point.--Xession (talk) 19:21, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

To my understanding, a planet's atmosphere is maintained with a molten core. Once the core's hardened through gradual cooling, the atmosphere's history. The only reason why Titan still has a liquid core and atmosphere is because Saturn's gravity is constantly mangling the insides. Lhw1 (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the core has much to do with it. The object's escape velocity compared with the velocity of the gas atoms (& thus temperature, mostly) at the top of the atmosphere is the critical point. The high-altitude temperature is controlled by the solar X-ray and UV flux, depending on solar activity; it is much higher than the surface temperature. Earth loses H & He rapidly (compared to its 4.6 Gy age), but O & N atoms move more slowly, and are retained longer. Wwheaton (talk) 14:29, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW - seems like a "follow-Earthlike-to-find-Water-to-find-Life" strategy - however, some life forms on planet earth, like tardigades and other xerophiles, for example, can survive quite well in an entirely dry state (and also quite well, apparently, in outer space); some other life forms thrive in oil & asphalt - such life forms may be a significant form of life in the universe - and may be missed if the present strategy predominates - besides the current focus, perhaps considering much less Earthlike environments might also be useful? (If interested, see my related published comments.) Drbogdan (talk) 05:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

All of the life forms that we know on Earth require liquid water to thrive. Tardigrades can survive long periods of dessication but they cannot reproduce and grow in such conditions. Organisms that thrive at very high (i.e. Archeae) or very low (some antarctic organisms) temperatures still live in liquid water (water is liquid above 100°C at the seabed due to high pressures and below 0°C off the coast of Antarctica due to salinity). Even bacteria in the desert sands grow in a thin film of water that catches onto the sand grains because of the dew. Yes it is perfectly possible that life on other planets will utilize radically different biochemical processes and/or reaction media (i.e. a solvent other than water) but this kind of life will be much harder to detect. What would be easiest to detect with the methods at our disposal in the near future (spectral analysis) is a form of life that would produce methane or other organic compounds or even better oxygen in a (liquid) water rich environment. This is the kind of life that is easiest for us to detect and unambiguously confirm . I'm afraid that with a radically different form of life we would have trouble confirming weather it's alive or not even if we had it in a petri-dish (if a petri-dish would even be suitable for growing such organisms :) ) here on Earth, let alone with spectral analysis of a planetary atmosphere . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.163.110.169 (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for replying - I *completely agree* with you - yes, actually detecting such xerophilic (& related) life forms might be a challenge - esp for exoplanets so very, very far away - but perhaps for objects within reach (so-to-speak), like mars, moon, asteroids, comets, etc, detecting such life forms may be more likely - if they exist at all - nonetheless, my basic concern, as before, is that we may overlook finding life forms if our searches are defined too narrowly - broad search approaches (esp if possible & presently practical) might be preferred - in any case - thanks again - your comments are *very much* appreciated - enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 02:56, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: original topic - finding more information about the "five earth-sized exoplanet candidates in the habitable zone"? - not sure, but it seems the original Kepler Data can be searched (at least to some extent) at the following Kepler Data Search & Retrieval WebSite - at least entering the stars "Kepler-10" and "Kepler-11" and planets "Kepler 10b," "Kepler-11b" and "KOI-428b" as "targets" seemed to give results - perhaps this link can help provide (in some way?) more information about the "five earth-sized exoplanet candidates in the habitable zone"? Drbogdan (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE: The "five earth-size exoplanet candidates in the habitable Zone" have been identified by Dr. David Koch, Kepler Deputy Principal Investigator (personal email, 02/15/2011), and the following edit has been added to the Main article in the "Known extrasolar planets..." Section -> Five Earth-size planets (namely, KOI 1026.01, KOI 854.01, KOI 701.03, KOI 268.01, KOI 70.03 - Table 6) are in the "habitable zone." Please feel free to improve the new edit as needed of course - in any case - enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 01:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Number of stars having Earth-size planets

The intro says now that "They estimate that 6% of stars host Earth-size planets and 19% of all stars have multiple planets."

Besides that it is unsourced, does the study actually imply above? As I see it, they are talking only about the distribution of the candidates.

http://arxiv4.library.cornell.edu/ftp/arxiv/papers/1102/1102.0541.pdf

Our current best estimates of the intrinsic frequencies of planetary candidates, after correcting for geometric and sensitivity biases, are 6% for Earth-size candidates, 7% for super-Earth size candidates, 17% for Neptune-size candidates, and 4% for Jupiter-size candidates. Multi-candidate, transiting systems are frequent; 17% of the host stars have multi-candidate systems, and 33.9% of all the candidates are part of multi-candidate systems.

IlkkaP (talk) 22:10, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Results on asteroseismology

Nice article! It would be good to include some of the results being published on asteroseismology (dozens of papers have been published so far, plus a NASA press release). Disclaimer: I am one of the astronomers working on them, so I will leave it to others to make the changes. Timb66 (talk) 03:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, If you are aware of any good (and preferably secondary) sources we can use on this aspect of the mission and can post links to them that would be greatly appreciated. ChiZeroOne (talk) 03:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, great. The primary sources (papers) can all be found at the ADS. Just search for papers with 'Kepler' and 'oscillations' in the title. You can find some PR-type material with the NASA release above, and also at the KASC home page. This has been written up on various astronomy news pages such as Universe Today. Thanks! Timb66 (talk) 05:39, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Help In Updating Kepler Spacecraft Image.

Would appreciate any help in updating the Kepler Spacecraft image from an older version (Keplerpacecraft.019e.jpg) to a newer version (Keplerspacecraft-20110215.jpg) recently supplied by Dr. David Koch (Kepler Deputy Principal Investigator, Personal EMail File-Attachment, 02/15/2011). In particular, I'm unfamiliar with how to update the many "Global File Usages" of the older image version to the newer version. Thanks in advance - and enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 05:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Cite error: The named reference borucki was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. Cite error: The named reference 5earths was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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