Given the timing it might mirror pretty closely the AAS conference, whose abstracts we're looking at above. Belleraphon1's post #398 is intriguing though.

My guess is derived from the abstract below from AAS meeting....
(admin, I copied the entire abstract because direct inks do not seem to work)

I think it is way too soon for them to announce any smaller worlds yet. The big guys are easier to nail down with RV confirmations. However they may hint that much more is to come. I also expect them to say a thing or two about the variable stars they are seeing.


" ground-based follow up observations confirm the discovery of exoplanets with sizes ranging from 0.6 Rj to1.5Rj and orbital periods ranging from 3 to 9 days"


"101.01
Presentation Time: Monday, Jan 04, 2010, 8:30 AM - 9:20 AM
Title Kepler Planet Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
Author Block William J. Borucki1, D. Koch1, G. Basri2, N. M. Batalha3, T. Brown4, D. A. Caldwell5, J. Caldwell6, J. Christensen-Dalsgaard7, W. Cochran8, E. DeVore5, E. Dunham9, A. Dupree10, T. Gautier11, J. Geary10, R. Gilliland12, A. Gould13, S. Howell14, J. Jenkins5, H. Kjeldsen7, Y. Kondo15, D. Latham10, J. Lissauer1, G. Marcy2, S. Meibom10, D. Monet16, D. Morrison1, D. Sasselov17, J. Tarter5
1NASA/Ames Research Center, 2University of California, 3San Jose State Universiy, 4Los Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, 5SETI Institute, 6York University, Canada, 7Aarhus University, Denmark, 8University of Texas, 9Lowell Observatory, 10SAO, 11JPL, 12STScI, 13Lawrence Hall of Science, 14NOAO, 15NASA GSFC, 16US Naval Observatory, 17Harvard.
Abstract The Kepler Mission is designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size and terrestrial size planets in and near the HZ of solar-like stars. It was competitively selected as Discovery Mission #10 and launched on March 6, 2009. Since completion of commissioning, it has continuously observed over 145,000 main sequence stars. The photometric precision reaches 20 ppm for 12th magnitude stars on the least noisy detectors in 6.5 hours. During the first month of operation, the photometer detected transit-like signatures from over 100 stars. Careful examination of these events shows many of them to be false-positives such as background eclipsing binaries. However ground-based follow up observations confirm the discovery of exoplanets with sizes ranging from 0.6 Rj to1.5Rj and orbital periods ranging from 3 to 9 days. Observations at Keck, Hobby-Eberly, Harlan-Smith, WIYN, MMT, Tillighast, Shane, and Nordic Optic telescopes are vetting many of the candidates and measuring their masses. Discovery of the HAT-P7b occultation will be used to derive atmospheric properties and demonstrates the precision necessary to detect Earth-size planets. Asteroseismic analyses of several stars show the presence of p-mode oscillations that can be used to determine stellar size and age. This effort is being organized by the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium at Aarhus University in Denmark. Stellar parallaxes are determined from the centroid motion of the stellar images and will be combined with photometric measurements to get the sizes of stars too dim for asteroseismic measurement. Four open clusters are being observed to determine rotation rates with stellar age and spectral type. Many types of stellar variability are observed with unprecedented precision and over long continuous time periods. Examples of many of these discoveries are presented. Funding by the Exoplanet Exploration Program of the NASA Astrophysics Division is gratefully acknowledged."

Craig

Keep in mind that the deadline for AAS meeting abstracts was back in October (an from experience most of the presentations are being put together this week), so it's not at all unusual for ongoing projects to submit what are almost placeholders in anticipation of later results. I would put more reading of the tea leaves into the NASA TV schedule announcement than what the submitted abstracts say.

Pamela Gay reports at Astrosphere that they will be video-streaming press conferences from the AAS meeting here; the exoplanet session is Wednesday Jan 6, 10 a.m. EST.

The Kepler folks themselves say they'll tell all tomorrow (Monday, January 4, 2010) at 10 AM PST (1800Z).

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/nasake...s&NewsID=15

Hopefully Emily can join this briefing! :-)

--Greg

Article titled "The Big Reveal"?

I dunno, man. I've personally framed Kepler's primary science return as a statistical sampling that'll give us a degree of insight into the frequency of occurrence of planetary systems (within some major constraints such as orbital plane alignment with Earth & relatively small orbital radii for observed objects, of course.) That's gonna take time.

This might be a cool one-off early discovery of some sort...but I hope the team isn't setting itself up for later PR problems by elevating expectations beyond what is reasonable & prudent. We've seen that happen before.

Five new exoplanets. 4 are larger than Jupiter. 1 is Neptune-sized. The relevant presentation just ended. 100 candidate planets in Kepler data so far. Thousands of candidate variable stars. Sub-stellar sized stars were expected to be prohibitively variable, but it didn't turn out to be that bad. Exoplanet sizes: 4 R_e, 15 R_e, 17 R_e, 19 R_e.

Kepler naming scheme.
4b, 5b, 6b 7b, 8b.
(3 planets alreay in field, so it's respect to those scientists).

Kepler-8 b Rossiter-McLaughlin effect measured. Prograde.
Kepler-4 b -> The Neptune.
Kepler-7 b very low density planet.

http://www.starstryder.com/2010/01/04/kepler-first-science/ We're told to expect something on arXiv.

Live blog from AAS: hot Jupiters and hot but icy giants, plus more than one case of a "planet" that has to be hotter than its star (and which doesn't fit as either a degenerate or main-sequence star). Sounds of discovery: "Hmm - that's funny...

Nice link. Interesting how much that person looks like you. :-) [You meaning Hungry, not NGC]

I'll be interested to hear what they make of the super hot Jupiters -- the ones significantly brighter than the stars they orbit. Deuterium burning was my first thought, but I thought I read that that phase doesn't last very long.

--Greg

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/tableofdiscoveries/

A very useful table.

Just look at the orbital period - all planets have orbital periods between 3 and 4 days. And the surface temperature is very high

EDIT : Another link! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/n...exoplanets.html

Slides:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/m...conference.html

Check out this slide:

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/414914m...discoveries.jpg

It puts the newly discovered planets in a familiar context.

It says all five planets were discovered from the first 43 days of data. Kepler has been observing for, what, 300 days at this point?

Also, irks me that it pins "habitable" as requiring the same orbital distance as Earth. An orbital distance of 1 AU is neither necessary nor sufficient for habitability. We'll find plenty of non-habitable planets at 1 AU, and we'll also find plenty of habitable planets outside 1 AU.

With no fear of being a false prophet - I predict that this data will be analyzed for several decades at least.

"It says all five planets were discovered from the first 43 days of data. Kepler has been observing for, what, 300 days at this point?"

It's the confirmation by ground-based radial velocity measurements that takes most of the time.

Liking those slides. Very high quality.

Rightfully so. I should have been more clear. My comment was intended to note that the discoveries presented today are just the first bushel load from a fruit tree ripe for the plucking.

its my understanding that first discovery will be planets close in.perhaps super Jupiter's with exomoons close in towards there red dwarf primary's might be next.lastly planets with orbital periods of one year or more might become known to us near the end of mission.

edit
ooops was trying to quote Zvezdichko post from the previous page

There are lots of Kepler-related papers on ArXiv today
http://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph.EP/recent

Thank you for the link Paolo. There goes the rest of my day .

"The Kepler Follow-up Observation Program"

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.0352v1.pdf



Quarters 0 and 1 must be the first 43 days of returned data.

Yeah, definitely some fascinating reading in here. Thanks Paolo.

Q0/Q1 is defined as "Q0 consisting of 9.7 days of data taken during commissioning and Q1 consisting of 33.5 days of data taken before the first quarterly roll of the spacecraft" in this summary paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0268

Good overview on oscillating, pulsating, and eclipsing stars in that one too.

Another interesting paper is the one where they model the star as a triaxial ellipsoid shape (think "like Haumea") in order to nail down the light curve better:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0413

Got to wonder what 'no star apparent at target location' really means.

Some very interesting papers there, especially considering how little Kepler data it was based on.

Seven more papers up on ArXiv today. A couple of them appear to be Kepler-related.

in Science Express today:
Kepler Planet-Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results

Paolo, access to that article costs $15. Does it contain any new information, or is it a rehash of information we have access to via other means? From the abstract it seems like nothing new.

The Science paper is essentially a summary of the method for detection and verification of the exoplanets and the properties of the four new ones presented in the press conference and arxiv papers. One issue that I had missed in other sources was: "The stars associated with the Kepler exoplanets are generally larger than those shown in the Exoplanet Encyclopedia for transiting planets (Fig. 2). The difference could be due to the Malmquist bias or to the preferential selection of stars with sharp spectral lines for the Kepler follow-up; i.e., slightly evolved stars."

Don't miss the supplemental materials, which have a wealth of information on things like how they filter out false positives (most were eclipsing binary stars), how they measure star size and mass, etc. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full...nce.1185402/DC1

The original paper has some nice graphs in it too, comparing Kepler results with previously-known planets. Surprisingly, they didn't find any super-short-period planets -- nothing under a day and a half -- even though such planets would have been the very easiest to discover (they don't need such precise alignment to give transits). No speculation on why this is though.

Figure 3 shows evidence that gas giants and ice giants actually form two clusters -- that there's isn't a smooth continuum of planet sizes. Three clusters, if you count rocky planets like Earth, although that's extrapolating from two data points. (And from the absence of points in between, of course.)

I wonder if they're really going to make us wait a whole year for another taste?

--Greg

IIRC, they load up all the planets they got and dump them onto the public every six months.

That's kind of an awesome thought in its way, isn't it?

Yeah, and with there being a finite number of easy-to-catch hot Jupiters, the bi-anually reports will only get better each time as longer and longer period planets are tracked down. (not to mention planets of lower and lower mass)

Possible failure in a module that holds two of the CCDs reported in the latest update:

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/mmu/in...s&NewsID=22

" . . . The possible loss of the module represents a loss of five percent of the Kepler Field-of-View. . . . The module will remain offline pending further trouble-shooting and analysis. In the event the module functionality cannot be restored, Kepler still is expected to fully meet its mission goals for detecting Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of other stars."

--Greg

Observations of Transiting Hot Compact Objects (by KEPLER)

"Kepler photometry has revealed two unusual transiting companions orbiting an early A-star and a late B-star. In both cases the occultation of the companion is deeper than the transit. The occultation and transit with follow-up optical spectroscopy reveal a 9400 K early A-star, KOI-74 (KIC 6889235), with a companion in a 5.2 day orbit with a radius of 0.08 Rsun and a 10000 K late B-star KOI-81 (KIC 8823868) that has a companion in a 24 day orbit with a radius of 0.2 Rsun. We infer a temperature of 12250 K for KOI-74b and 13500 K for KOI-81b. We present 43 days of high duty cycle, 30 minute cadence photometry, with models demonstrating the intriguing properties of these object, and speculate on their nature. "

http://fr.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.3420v1.pdf

VERY COOL er HOT!

Craig

Could the next announcement of planet discoveries (presumably still hot Jupiters, but possibly even hot superearths) come as early as next month, at the Amercian Physical Society meeting in Washington, DC? Most of the abstract (below) is old news, but the end ("discoveries of several new exoplanets are shown") is vague enough that new discoveries could be included. Does anyone have any insight on this?

From APS Meeting 2010

Session V1: Plenary Session III

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
9:06 AM–9:42 AM

William J. Borucki
(NASA Ames Research Center)

Kepler is a Discovery-class mission designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets in and near the habitable zone of solar-like stars. The instrument consists of a 0.95 m aperture photometer designed to obtain high precision photometric measurement of > 100,000 stars to search for patterns of transits. The focal plane of the Schmidt-type telescope contains 42 CCDs with at total of 95 megapixels that cover 115 square degrees of sky. The photometer was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on March 6, 2009, finished its commissioning on May 12, and is now in the science operations mode. During the commissioning, data were obtained at a 30 minute cadence for 53,000 stars for 9.7 days. During the first 33.5 days of science-mode operation, 156,000 stars have been observed. Discoveries based on these data are presented. Although the data have not yet been corrected for the presence of systematic errors and artifacts, the data show the presence of hundreds of eclipsing binary stars and variable stars of amazing variety. To provide some estimate of the capability of the photometer, a quick analysis of the photometric precision was made. Analysis of the commissioning data also show transits, occultations and light emitted from the known exoplanet HAT-P7b. The data show a smooth rise and fall of light from the planet as it orbits its star, punctuated by a drop of 130$\pm$11 ppm in flux when the planet passes behind its star. We interpret this as the phase variation of the dayside thermal emission from the planet plus reflected light as it orbits its star and is occulted. The depth of the occultation is similar in amplitude to that expected from a transiting Earth-size planet and demonstrates that the Mission has the precision necessary to detect such planets. Discoveries of several new exoplanets are shown and compared with known exoplanets with respect to mass, size, density, and orbital period. Detection of stellar oscillations and unusual objects are also presented.

No, I'd expect that this will just be a refinement of data we've already heard about. I guess it's vaguely possible that that refinement itself will have uncovered new planets, but from the tone of the abstract, I wouldn't expect it.

Would LOVE to be wrong, of course. :-)

--Greg

Then maybe, just maybe, our next opportunity will be March 29 at the Exoplanets Rising: Astronomy and Planetary Science at the Crossroads conference in Santa Barbara. I don't see any abstracts posted yet, but there are 45 minutes scheduled for a talk by Bill Borucki (NASA/Ames) entitled "Status of Kepler Results." One can hope.

Another safe mode on February 2: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/n...m-20100208.html

I asked an attendee at the APS conference if she had attended the Borucki talk on Kepler yesterday, and here was her reply: "I didn't see the talk myself, but from what I heard it was a summary of recent Kepler work - no new results." We'll try to be patient--certainly more at the AAS 216 meeting in Miami 23-27 May 2010, if not before.

Given that
- The exciting stuff is going to be earth like planets in Earth like orbits
- It takes three transits to confirm a planet discovery and then follow up obs from ground based scopes
- There is an epic quantity of data to get through

....people need to put the brakes on expectations of early results.

Understood. But I personally would feel that the discovery of numerous hot super-earths would be monumental. And I am chomping at the bit to hear about earth-sized or smaller planets being detected, regardless of the orbit. That announcement could could certainly come during the first half of this year, perhaps at the May AAS meeting. And while earth-like planets in earth-like orbits are certainly the gold ring, it is conceivable that a (super)earth in a habitable zone around a dimmer star could be discovered by the end of 2010, a year and a half after Kepler's first light. For example, a planet circling a star with half the sun's mass could have a two-month orbit and still fall within that star's habitable zone. I'd say the odds of headline-grabbing results during the next three months and again within the next nine months are quite good.

Do remember that most Kepler stars are inherently dim. Getting RV follow up to confirm a super-Earth is going to be tough. Recall how difficult it was to detect CoRoT-7 b. They sat on that for eons collecting data to announce a confirmation. If we get super-Earths around anything from Kepler by the end of 2010, I personally will be impressed.

But... I was impressed when the first batch contained a Neptune...

I think part of the idea is to get comfortable distinguishing planetary transits from other events, using RV measures as the gold standard. Then, when they find objects too small to double-check with RV, they'll be fairly confident of their results.

I'm just speculating here, but that's how I'd go about it. That being the case, I'll bet they've already got quite a number of possible Earth-sized planets with orbital periods of days or weeks around K-type stars. They just want to be sure.

--Greg

Another Mission Manager Update:

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/mmu/in...s&NewsID=34

No safe mode since 2/2, but they're still not sure of the cause. They're planning "mitigations" to reduce the impact, if another one happens.

I'm still worried about the possible MOD-3 failure reported in January:

http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/news/mmu/in...s&NewsID=22

Hopefully no news is good news, but it'd have been nice if they'd mentioned it.

--Greg

This statement also caught my eye: "The science team has just begun the follow-on observing season for 2010. At this time, the Kepler star field is visible for about one hour just before dawn. The Kepler star field will be visible for several months from the Earth’s northern hemisphere." Are they saying that they can only perform follow-on observations for a few months out of the year? Is observation from the southern hemisphere not possible?

I don't think that it is observable from the Southern Hemisphere (IIRC, it's in or near Cygnus in the northern sky). However, that has nothing to do with the fact that pretty much any non-circumpolar area of the sky is washed out by the Sun for at least a few months each year as the Earth orbits.

From Seattle (latitude 47 degrees 36 minutes 35 seconds north), Kepler's field of view (centered at declination +44 degrees 30 minutes) is circumpolar. Not that anyone would bother building a telescope here, but . . .

--Greg

True. I don't think that there are any large ground-based scopes (large enough to check Kepler observations, anyhow) far enough north to take advantage of that, though.

What is the most northerly truly large scope, anyhow? The 200-inch @ Palomar? The real titans all seem to be close to the Equator.

A better question would be how large a telescope is required to test Kepler's results. Lick is 120" and it's quite a bit north of Palomar.

--Greg

The most northerly telescopes by mirror diameter:

11.88m -- Large Binocular Telescope (Mt. Graham Obs.) -- 32.42N
5.08m -- Hale Telescope (Palomar Mountain Obs.) -- 33.21N
4.20m -- Large Sky Area Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (Xinglong Station) -- 40.23N
2.64m -- Shajn (Crimean Astrophysical Obs.) -- 44.44N
2.00m -- Alfred Jensch Teleskop (Karl Schwartzschild Obs.) -- 50.58N

Also, there are the following more limited telescopes:

6.00m -- Bolshoi Teleskop Azimutalnyi (Nizhny Arkhyz) -- 43.39N -- very poor imagery due to large thermal mass, but still good for spectroscopic studies
2.65m -- UBC-Laval Liquid Mirror Telescope -- 49.28N -- obvious limitations due to its liquid mirror design

What ground-based scopes actually are involved in checking Kepler observations? Is there a list somewhere?

Here is some info from a press release:

http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2010/0104.html

"Ground-based follow up is essential to Kepler’s planet-discovery process. ...using telescopes at a number of observatories on the ground to confirm or disprove they exist. Cochran’s team uses two telescopes at McDonald Observatory for this: the 9.2 meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope (one of the world’s largest) and the 2.7 meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope."

and

"Once a candidate star is identified, he said, it’s first observed by either the 2.7-meter Harlan J. Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory or similar-size telescopes at other observatories. This step is done to determine what type of star it is — to eliminate any stars whose light simply mimics the signature of a transiting planet (such as an eclipsing binary star). The Harlan J. Smith Telescope has been used to vet 60 to 70 planet possibilities from Kepler, Cochran said."

and

"“We look at the ones that survive the recon work, and prioritize them. If a star is a good candidate for further study, it is passed on to a large telescope like the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory or the Keck 1 Telescope in Hawaii.”

10.00m -- Keck 1 -- 19.50N
9.20m -- Hobby-Eberly Telescope -- 30.40N
2.72m -- Harlan J Smith Telescope -- 30.40N

Hobby-Eberly is fairly far north for its light-gathering abilities. Keck 1 is a bit far to the south, though. Other 8m class telescopes that are significantly further north than Keck 1 include the following:

11.88m -- Large Binocular Telescope -- 32.42N
10.40m -- Gran Telescopio Canarias -- 28.46N
6.50m -- MMT -- 31.41N

Obviously, obtaining time on any of these telescopes is the limiting factor, so beggars can't be choosers.