Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21714021b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #140.21; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
NASA's Kepler Mission, launched in March 2009, uses transit photometry to detect and characterize exoplanets with the objective of determining the frequency of earth-size planets in the habitable zone. The instrument is a wide field-of-view (115 square degrees) photometer comprised of a 0.95-meter effective aperture Schmidt telescope feeding an array of 42 CCDs that continuously and simultaneously monitors the brightness of up to 170,000 stars. In January, 2010, the team announced its first 5 planet discoveries identified in the first 43 days of data and confirmed by radial velocity follow-up. The "first five" are all short-period giant planets, the smallest being comparable in size to Neptune. Collectively, they are similar to the sample of transiting exoplanets that have been identified to date, the roster of which currently hovers around 100. In August 2010, an additional two planets, each orbiting the star Kepler-9, were confirmed by a combination of radial velocity and transit timing measurements. A third, smaller planet in the same system was validated stastistically by probing the parameter space for potential false-positives. Throughout 2010, a concerted effort was made to push radial velocity confirmation down toward the smaller planets. Recent progress on our efforts to confirm such candidates is discussed.
Batalha Natalie M.
Kepler Science Team
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