One unexpected (to me) fact is that using a planet's transit light curve and its primary's spectroscopic orbit (radial velocity), one can calculate the planet's surface gravity directly, as opposed to indirectly via mass and radius. This was discussed in this thread from a couple of years ago.

When will Kepler begin to actually observe stars?

According to the Kepler twitter site, it will be another 50-60 days before science operations start, so early to mid May.

Anyone wanting to read some background info about - and comments from people involved in - the Kepler mission should check out Ustrax's new blog, Beyond The Cradle. Some really good stuff on there, written by one of our most passionate and enthusiastic members. He's also been kind enough to use my latest poem, which was inspired by Kepler's mission.

http://beyondthecradle.wordpress.com

You're too kind my collab...friend...

Vultur and Mongo, Natalie Batalha told me that the next crucial event will be to eject the dust cover, that's when Kepler will get its first-light image, this will take place two weeks from now, on the 26th...that also when Batalha's will make her appearance at the blog...

A well-deserved plug. I'm on board for Rui's mission.

While we're at it, don't miss Stu's Kepler piece at Cumbrian Sky.

I'll second that... superb blog Ustrax !!! ( ... something completely different ).
Did I understand correct that the photometer was already turned on for tests, but the dust cover will stay on another fortnight?

Thanks, having Stu on the crew makes it worth of a visit...
If you have any suggestions please feel free to e-mail be about it...

Phillipe, I don't know about the photometer being already turned on, it's possible, I'll try to check it today, but, for sure, the first light won't be acquired before the 26th, that's when the cover gets ejected.

Thw twitter feed states that the photometer was switched on for testing on March 9th.



Also says the cover is still on.

Testing: The complexity of modern spacecraft is amazing. Glad they're testing! For instance, the detector electronics box which turns analog signals from the CCDs into digital data has more than 22,000 electronic components.

Planning on incorporating Kepler's mission into two Outreach talks next week, but struggling to find a good all-sky star chart showing which stars have exoplanets. Can anyone help out?

The closest thing to that I can think of is a script I have in Celestia which marks the positions of known extrasolar planetary systems. But ... Celestia isn't the best tool for making all-sky star charts. I can probably make you an all-sky star chart showing the positions of exoplanets if you give me an hour or so.

All I'll need is a blank all-sky atlas.
Edit: Found one.

Interesting question.

The Exoplanets Forum might be a good place to ask: http://listes.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/wws

NASA's Planetquest site has some sort of 3d "New Worlds Atlas" but I can't get it to work in my browser.

http://planetquest1.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_index.cfm

The exoplanets encyclopedia has a list of astronomers and groups working in the area. You could consider spamming all of them:

http://exoplanet.eu/people.html

(Or maybe just the groups -- there are a LOT of individuals!)

This table has the raw data (in the format of your choice), so you could plot it yourself, if you wanted to:

http://exoplanet.eu/catalog-all.php?mdAff=output#tc

And this site claims to be able to do interactive visualizations, although I couldn't see how to do more than query their database. You could ask, though:

http://nsted.ipac.caltech.edu/NStED/docs/holdings.html

Probably that's not better than what you found in your own web search, but I hope it helps.

--Greg

I looked at the 3d worlds atlas at the Planet Quest site, and I discovered that it could not produce what was needed. It shows a 3d model of the solar neighborhood. Only stars with planets are included though.

Early release version of the Kepler realtime simulation is now online at http://www.dmuller.net/kepler

Interesting to find out where & when the Kepler Space Observatory will be "visible" from Your location:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi
enter: Kepler (Spacecraft) as Target Body
and You'll find out the spacecraft is in constellation LEO MINOR

If you guys have any question regarding the mission Jon Jenkins, one of the Co-Investigators, will be happy to answer it at Beyond the Cradle until March 26.
Here's the link.

http://astronomynow.com/090309DavidKochInterview.html

re. an all sky map of exoplanet locations...

What an idiot I am! The answer was obvious and staring me in the face - Google Sky! I found a great website that has, among other things, a layer showing the locations of exoplanets ( http://stellarcartography.blogspot.com/200...ogle-earth.html ) and it works perfectly!

Click to view attachment

Well, I say "perfectly"... actually my computer is so old that it struggles with GoogleAnything; the video card is so prehistoric that it is no longer supported by its manufacturer, and the display of Google Mars/Earth/Sky freezes after a few minutes. So I'm "mapping" the exoplanet sky a few small chunks at a time, building up an atlas which will be really useful. A new computer is planned for later this year, then I'll be able to enjoy strolling around Mars like other people here.

Thanks for pointing out this blog Stu
Hope You'll have a new computer very soon...

Some very useful Kepler- and exoplanet-related downloadable Outreach resources here...

http://kepler.nasa.gov/ed/starwheel/index.html

The answers to the great questions that some of you guys sent to Jon Jenkins are alreasdy posted at BtC.
Here's the link.

Just got word from Natalie Batalha saying that there will be a slight delay, a couple of days, on the detection of first light.

By my count, the shutter was to be thrown overboard on March 25th (basically today). I'm wondering if the shutter will still be opened today (with Kepler's optics disabled), or remain attached and closed.

Just based on my own speculation, I'm wondering if the team needs a longer dark baseline. Maybe the optics are a bit noisier than anticipated.

Syrinx, according to Batalha, it took longer than expected to get really good calibration images. The had to do an extra telescope pointing just to be sure they got what they needed.

Keep us posted on the dust cover jettison

FIRST LIGHT!...Slow down ustrax...
Kepler is opening its eyes, not the full ejection but some some sunlight made its way around the cover.
Ejection will probably take place early next week...
http://beyondthecradle.wordpress.com/2009/...th-jon-jenkins/

What we might expect over the nominal mission - Quote from DK "talking about Earth-sized planets in a 1AU orbit, and we are expecting something like forty to fifty detections"

Hi Hugh,

I notice that he goes on to say it's based on the assumption that stars like our sun have terrestrial planets. Which means, I suppose, the number could be many hundreds (to include stars not like our sun) or, indeed, none (Earth The Cosmological Rarity).

As Tom Petty once sang ... the waiting is the hardest part. ;-)

Andy

Looks like you're not the only one thinking that thought...

"We’re having a hard time waiting for the dust cover to be released so that we can finally see what the stars look like through Kepler’s eyes. I’m confident that we won’t have to wait too much longer."

New Jon Jenkins update at BtC explaining that "first light".

KEPLER went into limited safe mode on March 23..... on of the reasons the dust cover has not been released as yet.

"2009 March 30. Mission Manager Update - Engineers have determined the cause of Kepler's entry into limited safe mode last week, and are preparing to return the spacecraft to normal operations. In order for Kepler to know where it is in space, and to know where to point its high-gain antenna toward Earth, the spacecraft maintains information about its position, called a state vector, which updates ten times per second. Every few days, navigators on the ground update their knowledge of Kepler's actual orbit, and ground controllers upload a new state vector to the spacecraft. Engineers have concluded that, if the new state vector's start time is a multiple of 1,000 seconds from the start time of the previous vector, a momentary glitch occurs in the calculated spacecraft attitude. Even though this only lasts for one-tenth of a second, the spacecraft senses something it didn't expect and responds by pointing its solar arrays directly at the sun and awaiting further instructions from Earth. It will take a few days to ensure that everything is ready to proceed with commissioning, the next major step being release of the telescope's dust cover. March 30 14:00 UTC - Distance to Kepler: 2,362,000 km; 1,467,000 mi; 0.016 AU; 6.14 times the distance to the Moon."

http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/news.html

Craig

Well, it's nice to know safe mode works properly, too

Kepler’s cover ejection will, most probably, take place ”mid next week“.

Dust cover soon... space science takes patience...

2009 April 2. Mission Manager Update - Flight controllers have transitioned Kepler out of its low-activity safe mode and have powered on its main instrument, the photometer. The spacecraft is in what is called "standby
attitude" with the telescope pointed at the ecliptic North pole. Data will be collected from the photometer over the many hours it will take to stabilize the instrument at its operational temperature. The technical and programmatic reviews leading to dust-cover release are currently scheduled to be completed on Monday, April 6. Dust-cover release is scheduled to occur not earlier than Tuesday evening, April 7.

http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/news.html

Craig

Looks like, if everything goes well, that today is the day we've been waiting for...

"(Just like launch) assuming everything goes well from here on out, tomorrow (April 7) evening is going to be a big Kepler Mission milestone! So we’re getting pretty excited about seeing the stars for the first time, but will have to wait at least a few days since there are data transfer and processing delays."

http://kepler.nasa.gov/about/news.html

2009 April 7 RELEASE: The dust cover on NASA's Kepler spacecraft is scheduled to be ejected tonight, no earlier than 6:30 p.m. Pacific Time, with a backup opportunity tomorrow evening.

Ejected successfully!

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0904/07kepler/

--Greg

Success!

Bring us those brave new worlds Kepler!

Anyone know how thick the "wire" was and was there back up circuits to power it and burn it through ?

KEPLER is close to starting its science mission... I tremble with anticipation... eta sub E of the Drake equation is about to be quantified...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

We stand where Galileo did 400 years ago. What will we know in four years?

GLORIOUS!

Craig

According to this Planetary Society blog entry about the dust cover ejection, Kepler is more than 3 million kilometers from Earth already. Wow...

(Hopefully that's far enough away from city lights... )

It's FULL of stars!!!
http://beyondthecradle.wordpress.com/2009/...-full-of-stars/

And proberbly several earth like planets.

A reconfirmation of TrES-2 would be nice first bit of news.

Well, there's a transit every few days, so the Kepler scientists might have already seen it!

Just for your amusement...
Seems as if Kepler has already made an astounding discovery according to this report.

Telescope finds 100,000 possible Earth-like stars

So, it's already found them. The stars are 'Earth-like' (so not very bright then). To top that, according to the article... like Kepler, Ball Aerospace & Technologies is being controlled on a day-to-day basis by students at the University of Colorado.

A lovely job of taking probably what was a longer article or press release and then editing it so it makes no sense at all.

FULL INLINE QUOTE REMOVED - ADMIN

Plenty of fail in that article. I have to wonder what the editors were busy with when that column hit their inbox for approval.

There may well be 100 Denver-based BLOGS with better and more accurate Kepler content. I love the internet.

So, any predictions as to when that will be?

At 2.5 days between transits, a solid confirmation will take between 5 and 7.5 days of observations, plus whatever wait time there is till the next scheduled download, and however long it takes to eke out the light curves from the data.

Before the middle of May, perchance?

I would guess mid-May at the latest. Probably earlier. I think the team will probably use TrES for calibration.

During the science phase, the team will have monthly downlinks.

During the calibration phase, I'd expect the downlinks to be scheduled as needed.