A BRIGHT FUTURE: The Kepler spacecraft detected the subtleties of a known exoplanet's orbit, indicating its ability to detect as yet undiscovered small planets.
Image: NASA
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NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which may soon help scientists put our planet in its galactic context by showing how common Earth-like worlds are throughout the Milky Way, is off to a good start.
The space telescope, which was launched in March and began its science mission in May, will spend more than three years observing a patch of 100,000 stars near the northern constellations Cygnus and Lyra. If those stars have planetary systems aligned with Kepler's line of sight, the spacecraft's photometer should be able to detect the periodic dimming caused by the planets as they transit, or pass in front of, their stars.
Hundreds of exoplanets—planets beyond our solar system—have already been detected from the ground and from other spacecraft via transit searches and other methods. But the current exoplanet catalogue primarily reflects the low-hanging fruit—extremely large planets in tight orbits, whose visible or gravitational effects on their stars are more pronounced. Many of these planets are known as hot Jupiters.
Kepler's mission is to seek out smaller worlds more like our own, ideally in comfortable, life-enabling orbits in their respective stars' so-called habitable zone.
A paper in this week's Science, using 10 days of early data gathered by Kepler, demonstrates the spacecraft's ability to spot large planets and provides encouragement that Earth-size bodies are within its reach.
In the study, the Kepler team shows that the data clearly reveal the dimming caused by the periodic transit of HAT-P-7 b, an exoplanet nearly twice the mass of Jupiter that orbits the star HAT-P-7, about 1,000 light-years away. The exoplanet, discovered last year by ground-based observatories, orbits so close to its star that it completes a loop in just 2.2 days—making it a very hot Jupiter.
"It is so hot, in fact, that it glows, like the heating element in your oven or toaster," says Kepler deputy principal investigator David Koch of NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. In addition to the dip in starlight as HAT-P-7 b passed in front of its star, Kepler was able to detect the exoplanet's glow, which appears in the data as increased emission from the star when the planet is visible alongside of it.
Crucially, Kepler also detected a slight dip in luminosity, much less dramatic than the dimming associated with the planet passing in front of the star, when HAT-P-7 b passed behind its star—the spacecraft was seeing only the star's light, without the reflection and glow from the exoplanet.
"When the planet is orbiting the star, when it goes in front of the star, of course, you see the transit—the planet is blocking the light from the star," Koch says. "When the planet goes behind the star, the star is now blocking the light from that glowing, red planet, and that causes what's called an occultation."
Occultation is a much less pronounced phenomenon than a planetary transit, so Kepler's ability to track the occultation of a large planet indicates that it will be able to detect the transit of a smaller one.
The key observation from the new research is that the small dip in the HAT-P-7 b light curve when the planet passes behind its star "is roughly equivalent to the signal of an Earth-size planet when it passes in front of its parent star," says Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, who is not part of the Kepler team.
Detecting smaller, cooler planets is a long process. The only truly Earth-like planet we know of—ours—takes more than 150 times as long as HAT-P-7 b does to circle its star, so collecting data on similar planets across multiple orbits will take years.
Even the new hot Jupiters and other close-orbiting planets that Kepler finds will take extensive follow-up observations from the ground to confirm. (As Koch points out, a star's periodic dimming can be explained by one star eclipsing another in a binary star system.) Koch says he expects the first large exoplanets discovered by Kepler to begin rolling out early next year.
In the meantime, the early evidence that Kepler will be able to detect Earths is "absolutely convincing," Kalas says. "Essentially, they are offering a window into the scientific future: Kepler will soon detect an Earth-sized planet outside of the solar system."
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12 Comments
Add CommentWe already folded time and space successfully and travel through it daily. We already have anti-gravity spacecraft with inertia dampening technology. We already made contact with aliens and work side by side with them. We have already discovered ancient civilizations on the lunar surface of the Earths Moon and on Mars. We have discovered multiple ancient civilizations like our own and many more advanced on our own planet dating back thousands of years predating our own histories. Do to the fact of the stone age type religions promoting phobic bigotry and thug mentality is why the true scientific community is unable to release these facts, write papers and release technologies to global general public. So, we create little boy toy wonders like this NASA's Kepler spacecraft to shut you all up. The truth is in front of your noses -literally, but you are all still too primitive in order to mature into this real world reality of technology. Until a needed radical global change occurs or chaos of horrid disasters will be the only resolve for the needed chance for change. I truly believe these terrorist primitive phobic bigot thug intellectual limiting religions is our primary downfall and the lacking of proper scientific oriented primary and secondary schooling is needed. Cannibalizing our children's minds with phobic bigotry thug oriented religions to prove mythological theology of GOD and eternal life is global murder. NASA, grow up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the image caption ("A BRIGHT FUTURE: ... indicating its ability to detect as yet discovered small planets.) "discovered" should be "undiscovered".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...I think I'll stick to Okum's razer here. What's more likely: A religious conspiracy to manipulate mankind, or a simple truth that Stargate SG-1 is merely a well conceived TV show and that we still have a long way to go?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTroll detected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSadly, when the religious-prone discover science, it doesn't always end with a rationality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook. Religions have every potential to be destructive primitive myths, and certainly in the hands of many, are. However, taking a religion and substituting its god with another, be it science, philosophy, politics, etc... isn't necessarily an improvement. The foundation needs to be rebuilt...
Hotblack, I agree that substituting politics for religion may even be worse. But what better foundation for improved society than science? Pure science is the only possible foundation for rational society. The fault is the imperfect human.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we can detect other planets that have the potential for human-like life, then we are that much closer to finding and contacting a society that may have already achieved rationality in their global thinking. We must hope for wormholes, because light speed just don't cut it. Have you read Xenocide and Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card? Fascinating fiction and a wholly believable premise for instantaneous travel. I find it interesting and contradicting that Card is a devout Mormon and yet has such a progressive mind.
I am going crazy here, trying to find a report that I read a few months ago. It was on research into how people can "split" their mind into a wholly rational part and a "believer" part. Information in the believer part is NEVER examined closely by the rational part. This allows some scientists and other primarily rational people to still be "believers" in outrageous religious doctrines, simultaneously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting, sezme. I recall something regarding right/left separation, and I know that some people are totally dominated by one hemisphere or the other. But I can't help you with the rational/believer brain separation theory. From my experience, belief in the irrational comes either from brainwashing by the parents or a significant experience which is otherwise unexplainable to the individual, or both. Sounds like a classic split personality if one could choose whether to be rational or a believer. Many times the different personalities are not aware of the others, but the same part of the brain controls them all. Freaky stuff to those of us who are totally grounded to reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, these comments are simply so irrelevant and off on a tangent that I had to read the article again to be sure they were related to the Kepler telescope.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the argument is based on the subtlety of money being spent in an area that competes with more important needs - then why not take the stance that we don't need eyes on the universe, nor our solar system, why not close our eyes to our planet and stick our heads in the sand as well!
Yes there are many needs on our frail world: so much poverty, illiteracy and so on - but perhaps its not a matter of replacing one need for another, but the wish that perhaps we can accommodate all our human needs.
We 'need' eyes on the universe, for in a sense we are looking deep within ourselves and if you don't believe in God; then, that is your choice, but the universe brought about our existance and it's in our DNA to seek answers to how, where and why - and part of this latent questioning is: "are there other beings out there?"
I'm so glad scientist are doing this research. Condition favorable for human life could vanish on this planet with one big comet or the eruption of one mega volcanoe. We humans also need to be working on the epi-genome so we can start manipulating our genes so that we don't die. If we plan to travel to a planet that's 10,000 light years away, don't you think we need to live a very long time to accomplish that? Hopefully in the near future 5 year olds with the IQ of Albert Einstein will be considered slow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at us, killing each other over some belief know one can pretend to prove. Humans!...chimpanzees with an intellect.
(Climbing off soap box....sorry!)
that is an interesting thought, but where is your evidence?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKepler mission is a brilliant mission but has a self limiting factor of finding planets only when they transit their star(s)! Rogue planets or planets wandering in too far away orbits of parent stars are still difficult to detect! Kepler mission forms a great precursor for Finesse mission to be launched in 2015! Hopefully, some live telecast of the earthlike planets will be then possible!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://crestvideos.com/kepler-telescope-performs-outstandingly/