Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998dps....30.5527b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #30, #55.P27; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 30, p.1452
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Kepler Mission is a proposed Discovery-class mission that uses a wide field-of-view telescope to photometrically monitor 100,000 main-sequence stars for evidence of planetary transits. Because of the large number of stars monitored and because the mission is designed with a precision (0.002 Earth-size planets transiting solar-like stars, several hundred Earth-size planets should be found if planetary systems like the Solar System are common. Based on the the Dopper velocity observations that find 2 main-sequence stars have Jupiter-size planets in short-period orbits, the Kepler mission is also expected to detect about 2000 giant planets. From these data and measurements of the characteristics of the monitored stars, several questions about the association of planet types and stellar characteristics can be investigated. For example; Are small planets found when Jupiter-mass planets are also present in inner orbits? What is the frequency of small planets compared to Jupiter-mass planets? What is the frequency and distribution of planets intermediate in size and mass to that of Earth and Jupiter? What correlations exist between planet size, distribution, and frequency with the characteristics of the stars they orbit? A comparison between model predictions and observation should be a useful step in evolving better models of planetary system formation and help put the formation of our Solar System in perspective.
Borucki William. J.
Jenkins Jon Michael
Koch David G.
Lissauer Jack . J.
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