.

latest update

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/n...m-20090723.html

Sadly, this latest "update" tells us nothing except that there hasn't been another safe-mode event. I realize they have their reasons (as I've said before) but it's a pity they can toss us a bone or two.

--Greg

Patience, Grasshopper. (And no more safing events sounds mighty good to me!)

Thank you, wise and quiet neighbor. :-) Perhaps I should invite you and Van over for a beer sometime.

--Greg

Hey - I totally understand the impatience. I think Kepler is my fave mission right now (and isn't it cool that we have so many to choose from?!), but it's definitely not an instant-gratification mission. Cassini, Messenger, half-a-dozen (well, close enough) Mars missions... lots of pretty pictures to just go ooh! and aah! over as soon as they're downlinked. Kepler... not so much. But when the missions scientists get done massaging the data into something they can release - man-oh-man! In a way, Kepler's a thousand (or more!) planetary missions in one. Just thinking about it gets the salivary glands going. Now where's my drool bucket?

Yes, patience is a necessary commodity here. I do not want hints, or anagrams (with due apologies to the great Galileo, living, as he did, in a time when the truth could get you killed).

I want the data and the truth that delivers.

Will be interesting in a year to compare Kepler results to Corot. Are the lack of planet detections by Corot a factor of instrumental effects or obervational hindrance, or real? Kepler will weigh in on that.

RV studies predict approximately 30% solar type stars have terrestrial mass planets in inner regions.
Why does Corot refute that?

The truth is what matters The universe does not care what we want.

Fascinating times ahead.

Craig

It also gives us what we don't expect!

See KEPLER forum where I stand partly corrected... looks like instrumental effects limited COROT's yield.

page 6 of..
http://fr.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0907/0907.5150v1.pdf

Craig

Should have said COROT above, not KEPLER.

Craig

NASA TV Schedule

August 6, Thursday
2 p.m. - Kepler Mission News Conference - HQ (Public and Media Channels)

That's 18:00 GMT/UTC for those who don't live on the U.S. east coast.

Hey, that's my birthday!

Looking forward to a nice prezzy from NASA...

Bill

Look forward to this, but... Like to see the list of presenters....

Remember, what the general public considers newsworthy is not the same as what most of us here on UMSF would consider newsworthy.

I would not expect any firm planetary announcements... way too soon for that. But do expect a report on
sensitivity and maybe a qualitative hint about first look candidates. Any actual transits will need RV confirmations which take time.

Then again... I hope they blow my news conference prediction away. Maybe Mongo and all of us will get a neat present.

Craig

I'm not sure about RV confirmation. Kepler is different from Corot. It is possible to confirm planetary candidates detected by Corot using RV, but Kepler is much more sensitive and most of its detections will fall below detection level of currently available spectrographs (HARPS and SOPHIE). Of course, RV method is still useful in rejection background binaries. I suspect most of the "planets" found by Kepler will remain in candidate status for a while.

Well this press conference is certainly unexpected.

I can't imagine that it will contain anything other than information and good news. Two safe mode events don't warrant a press conference, which is the only bad news so far however slight.

Maybe a confirmation of the previously-known extrasolar planets in Kepler's view? TrES-2b, HAT-P-7b, and HAT-P-11b all have orbital periods under 5 days, thus Kepler should have spied plenty of transits for them by now.

http://nexsci.caltech.edu/missions/KeckSol...l-current.shtml


http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/observing/schedule/index.php
Borucki users HIRES 29-31.07.2009, 01-09.09.2009, 3-5.10.2009, 28-29.10.2009

Discovery hot jupiter users about 10 RV-measurements or 20 minut time Keck-HIRES.

My forecast conferences NASA on August 6 - present 10-100 new hot transit gas giants planets depending on numbers false planet candidate

I made a similar guess-timate about the first CoRoT press conference. The announcement of a single hot Juptier was more-or-less a disappointment.

I learned my lesson.

Yeah, it makes sense that they'd be announcing their first planet discoveries. I guess the real questions would be a) how many and down to what sizes? Given they've got several weeks of data, they might be able to report Mercury-sized objects in 7-day orbits -- if any such exists.

Only one set of those dates (July 29, 30, 31) is in the past.


What sort of time allocation does one reserve at Keck? Just from their web page it seems two teams split one night. So would that mean Borucki/Marcy had ~6 hours x 3 days = ~18 hours?

Anyway, I'm guessing Borucki/Marcy had to schedule their Keck time long ago before they even knew how many candidates they'd have. So I think correlating reserved Keck time with candidate quantity is specious.

Then of course there may be other additional teams confirming Kepler's results with other telescopes.

Hard for me to guess. I wasn't expecting any announcements any time soon, so anything more than a brief update is butter to me.

I do not know. High probability that 50% on 50%.

If I had to guess, I would say the press conference is both about spacecraft problems, and TrES-2 b.

Pessimist. Couldn't help but start thinking, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down..."

I would put my money here...well...maybe not all of it...

Well I did just receive this in another email

"WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a media briefing on Thursday, Aug. 6, at
2 p.m. EDT, to discuss early science results of the Kepler mission. "

It doesn't make any reference to spacecraft problems...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20090803/pl_u...science_results


after three consecutive nights of observations with Mauna Kea (W. M. Keck Observatory ) in Washington at a press conference with hot dog (planets)

From spaceref.com

Editor's's note: According to multiple sources, Kepler has not found anything "new". However it has successfully detected at least one previously discovered substellar object circling another star. In other words, this amazing little spacecraft works!

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28885

Craig

My pessimism never fails! Haha.

I still look forward to the press release.

That is not entirely true.

Ok, Mr Inside Knowledge, which part of that previous post isn't "entirely true"?

Looking forward to Thursday's press conference... even with Kepler telescope's larger field of view and better optics, 3 transits are needed to confirm an exo-planet. So why shouldn't they require RV (Radial Velocity) confirmations... It could speed up the science output?

Is it Friday already?...
I know nothing...but we'll have new articles at BtC on the 6th.
I have the feeling that Hungry4info can keep a little bit of the pessimism after the conference...

AFAIK, radial-velocity data cannot now reach the precision to see the Doppler signature of the Earth on the Sun, which is the spot everyone hopes Kepler reaches. For most potential host stars, noise due to such things as convective features on the star limits the precision reachable no matter how good the photon statistics are. However, radial-velocity confirmation of a different kind can come from changes in the star's velocity centroid during transit (the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect), which can have a rather larger amplitude than the reflex Doppler shift. Happening only during a single transit, it also places less stringent requirements on the star's own long-term stability in centroid velocity. Anyway, that's how I'd approach the followup. (Well, that and attempts to winnow out projected third stars blended with ordinary eclipsing binaries; RV studies could do a fair job at that by seeing multiple velocity components all the time).

For those who didn't click through, let's take a look at the rest of that editor's note: "In addition, new candidate exoplanets have also been discovered but await confirmation by other telescopes. The results of Kepler's observations will appear in an article in this week's edition of Science magazine."

Hah. That extra part wasn't there earlier today. It's been edited.

Gsnorgathon

that additional note was added AFTER my posting. SO.. everyone... "keep watching the skies...."

Seriously... not sure what sort of article will appear in Science, but that is a one heck of a fast track for publication.
So not sure if this will be a peer reviewed paper, or an editorial article from Kepler participants.

Let's all stay tuned...

BOY I love this... a real encyclopedia of worlds we will have in 20 years.

Craig

Exceeds.

Ah... interesting that that bit was added later, isn't it? And yeah, the prospect of this press conference has me reaching for my drool bucket, for sure. (And the cold, hard realist is saying "hold on son - the real juicy bits won't come until later.")

Even though we can't detect an Earth in an Earth-like orbit, we can set limits on its mass. The transit periodicity tells us the semi-major axis, radius, and orbital period, based on the mass and size of the star. We'll know if the planet is in the habitable zone.

If we don't detect the planet, this may be better news than if we do, as the planet would thus be fairly low-mass. If we do detect the planet, then it certainly won't be Earth-like.

On the other-hand, being that we know that RV signal to look for, we might be able to detect an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone. The inability to detect Earth analogues around solar-type stars is partly because we don't know where to look in the data. It's just a sea of dots on a graph. Transit detection will tell us what period to look around, and the transit ephemeris will tell us where the signal will be.

Searching for planets with Kepler transit photometry already in hand will be like saying "Here is the planet, we already know where it's RV curve is, and we already know it is there." This will allow much lower planet-masses to be discovered than blind-searching.

EDITED: If only Galileo was here...

EDITED
Sorry Ustrax - we've said no more rhyme and riddle - ADMIN

At the rate they're downplaying things now, I'm fully expecting the head of the Kepler team to stand up at today's press conference and say "Sorry to disappoint you all, but we haven't found any Earth sized planets yet. But hey, some good news, I found my car keys!" ...

Stu...I guess we all know it isn't about that...
Now about those car keys...where were they occulted?...under his hat?
Articles by Jon Jenkins and Natalie Batalha at BtC when the clock marks 2.02PM EDT.

EDITED: Here they are:

HAT-p-7b confirmation and many great things to come - With Natalie Batalha

HAT-p-7b and the Grail quest - With Jon Jenkins

Dr Alan Boss showed an interesting graph of the already 352 exo-planet detected with graph-axes; Earth masses versus Orbital distance...
Is this graph available online?

Here Phil: http://kepler.nasa.gov/media/earlyresults/...lanetDistro.jpg
All of the images are at the mission's website:
http://kepler.nasa.gov/press/earlyresults.html

Interesting that HAT-P-7 is so much hotter on one side but that the other two are not. I wish they'd posted the data for all three, just so we could compare and contrast. Perhaps that'll all be in tomorrow's article in Science.

--Greg

Press meeting summary:
1. Kepler Space Telescope's detector works fine and it's capable of detecting Earth-sized exo-planets.
2. Optical wavelength detection of the phase curve of the planet HAT P-7b... accuracy is everything

I found myself mildly excited by this press conference. Exciting to know that they've already achieved this precision.
Thanks for all the links.

From Natalie Batalha's comments in BtC.. thanks Ustrax..

"Many of the light curves looked like they were drawn with a fine-point marker. I sent a sample light curve to a colleague and he replied asking me to please send the raw data as opposed to the “smoothed” data that hides the noise. It was a pleasure to tell him that this WAS the raw data."

That is exactly what struck me during the press conference... how clean that light curve looks... a beautiful line..

Much to look forward to...

Craig

... I think sums that up. Excellent news.

Andy

I took a couple screen caps during the press conference.





Was anyone else highly disappointed by the Q&A? All their questions were either useless or answerable by Wikipedia. I was hoping Planetary Society might dial in with some intelligent questions.

- Put this into perspective for an average joe.
- How far away is HAT-P-7b?
- How hot is HAT-P-7b?
- How far away is Kepler?

Nobody asked how many Earth candidates they may have found!? And even the principal investigator hinted at something about it! He said about Earth-size planets: "We need three data points, and for all we know we may already have one of them."

You were? Than I must assume that you don't know what Kepler is about and that you don't value the science taking place.
Since the beggining the team points to 2012 as the timeline for results regarding an Earth-like planet.
Are you disappointed by the fact they have decided to come up front and tell us what is going on until then?
I am disappointed with you for not rejoicing with the fact that Kepler ACTUALLY works. That is what I've got from this conference, the thing is really able to detect an Earth-size planet. And...who knows? It might have found one already...Guess one have to be patient and not disappointed.