NASA Kepler Space Telescope Finds New Planets

NASA Kepler Space Telescope Finds New Planets

On January 4th, 2010, the Kepler Science Team announced the first five worlds discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope. These planets are larger Jupiter-sized ones, instead of the smaller Earth-sized planets it was designed to detect, but these discoveries pave the way by assuring that the systems all work and that the science goals will be met. This announcement was made at the Meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held this week in Washington DC. Here is a link to the press release:

http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews...

Here are some quick facts about the Kepler mission, scheduled to launch March 6, 2009:

- Kepler is the world's first mission with the ability to find true Earth analogs, planets that orbit stars like our sun in the "habitable zone." The habitable zone is the region around a star where the temperature is just right for water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it, to pool on a planet's surface.

- By the end of Kepler's three-and-one-half-year mission, it will give us a good idea of how common or rare other Earths are in our Milky Way galaxy. This will be an important step in answering the age-old question...Are we alone???

- Kepler detects planets by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars. Some planets pass in front of their stars as seen from our point of view on Earth. When they do, they cause their stars to dim slightly, an event Kepler can see.

- Kepler has the largest camera ever launched into space, a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices, or CCDs, like those in everyday digital cameras.

- Kepler's telescope is so powerful that from its view up in space, it could detect one person in a small town turning off a porch light at night.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/multimedia/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html