Kepler Mission... X-post from OOT

[billygrippo]

a few weeks ago i went to a science lecture about the upcoming kepler mission. i found it very interesting and was amazed at the pure genius of this method.

here is the nasa site, full of info. (http://kepler.nasa.gov/)

if your interested in space, check this out.

[billygrippo]

heres the cliff notes for all you lazy jerks who dont wana read up on this:


"The Transit Method of Detecting Extrasolar Planets:

When a planet passes in front of its star as viewed by an observer, the event is call a transit. Transits by terrestrial planets produce a small change in a star's brightness of about 1/10,000 (100 parts per million, ppm), lasting for 2 to 16 hours. This change must be absolutely periodic if it is caused by a planet. In addition, all transits produced by the same planet must be of the same change in brightness and last the same amount of time.

The orbit size and planet size can be calculated from the period (how long it takes the planet to orbit once around the star) and depth of the transit (how much the brightness of the star drops). From the orbit size and the temperature of the star, the planet's characteristic temperature can be calculated. From this the question of whether or not the planet is habitable (not necessarily inhabited) can be answered.

The Kepler instrument is a specially designed 0.95-meter diameter telescope called a photometer or light meter. It has a huge field of view —105 deg2— for an astronomical telescope or about the area of both your hands held at arm's length. It continuously and simultaneously monitors the brightnesses of more than 100,000 stars for the life of the mission—4 years.

For a planet to transit, as seen from our solar system, the orbit must be lined up edgewise to us. The alignment is less critical for planets closer in to their stars. The probability for the orbits to be properly aligned is about 0.5% when the planet is in an orbit about its star similar to the earth's orbit about our Sun.

The photometer must be spacebased to obtain this precision and to avoid interruptions caused by day-night, seasonal cycles and atmospheric perturbations, such as, extinction associated with ground-based observing."

[SomethingClever]

Interesting. When we discover the first planet, do you think we'll use the Z-Machine to shoot 3.6 billion degree plasma at it at 76,000 mph?

[billygrippo]

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting. When we discover the first planet, do you think we'll use the Z-Machine to shoot 3.6 billion degree plasma at it at 76,000 mph?

[/ QUOTE ]

of course. (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/O/OrionProj.html)