Kepler: First step in discovering the extent of life in our galaxy

Details Kepler: First step in discovering the extent of life in our galaxy Kepler: First step in discovering the extent of life in our galaxy

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p33c..03b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P33C-03

Biology

[5200] Planetary Sciences: Astrobiology, [6296] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Extra-Solar Planets

Scientific paper

The first step in discovering the extent of life in our galaxy is to determine the number of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars. The Kepler Mission is based on transit photometry and is designed specifically to determine the frequency of terrestrial planets in the HZ. The instrument is a wide field-of-view photometer with a 0.95 m aperture and a 95 million pixel set of CCD detectors. It continuously monitors the brightness of 150,000 solar-like stars to detect patterns of transits that provide the size of the planet relative to the star and its orbital period. Combining these measurements with ground-based spectroscopy fixes the stellar parameters, the planet radius, orbital distance, and location relative to the HZ. Measurements made during the commissioning phase of the Mission demonstrated the ability of the instrument to detect signal amplitudes appropriate to Earth-size planets and discovered the light emitted by the planet. At the end of the 3.5 year mission, hundreds of terrestrial planets should be discovered in and near the HZ of their stars if such planets are common. Such a result would imply that life could be ubiquitous in our galaxy whereas the lack of such detections would imply that life must be rare.

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