NASA to Announce Kepler Discovery

NASA to Announce Kepler Discovery at Media Briefing

NASA will host a news briefing at 2:00pm EDT (11:00am PDT), Thursday, Sept. 15, to announce a new discovery by the Kepler mission. The briefing will be held in the Syvertson auditorium, building N-201, at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The event will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet. Although additional observations will be needed to achieve that milestone, Kepler is detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help us better understand our place in the galaxy.

A representative from Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., will join a panel of scientists to discuss the discovery. The briefing participants are:
--Charlie Sobeck, Kepler deputy project manager, Ames Research Center
--Nick Gautier, Kepler project scientist, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
--Laurance Doyle, lead author, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
--John Knoll, visual effects supervisor, ILM, San Francisco.
--Greg Laughlin, professor for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, University of California, Santa Cruz, Calif.

The panel is very interesting. Has a SETI Institute representative ever sat in on a press conference regarding planets found with Kepler? And why Lucasfilm? Maybe this is something big. But they have hyped these in the past and I know I was pretty disappointed. Maybe they found another habitable planet. We need a good new space race.
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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

I watched it...well the first few minutes of it. I then realized how disappointed I was in the entire thing. I guess this has to be expected of NASA as of lately though. I mean the discovery is cool, but the Lucas Arts/films guy or whoever seemed to be there just so they could use the Star Wars names and etc. Cool discovery, but one of NASA's worst press conferences on the books.
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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

NASA Discovers Tatooine-Like Planet


ILM stands for Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas' FX company

I watched it...well the first few minutes of it. I then realized how disappointed I was in the entire thing. I guess this has to be expected of NASA as of lately though. I mean the discovery is cool, but the Lucas Arts/films guy or whoever seemed to be there just so they could use the Star Wars names and etc. Cool discovery, but one of NASA's worst press conferences on the books.

The question is ;

Does Kepler have the capability of finding an earth-size planet in a habitable zone and how far out would it have this capability. Would it be able to determine if the orbit were nearly circular ?

I watched it...well the first few minutes of it. I then realized how disappointed I was in the entire thing. I guess this has to be expected of NASA as of lately though. I mean the discovery is cool, but the Lucas Arts/films guy or whoever seemed to be there just so they could use the Star Wars names and etc. Cool discovery, but one of NASA's worst press conferences on the books.

It is a cool discovery though Jason!

I suppose we all get excited when NASA hold press conferences and say they have some "BIG" announcement about Exoplanets. Really, we're all kinda hoping that some day NASA will tell us the big one......That they found and confirmed life somewhere else. Then its a let-down if they don't announce that.

What we are confirming with the Kepler telescope is that other solar systems are similar to our own, and sometimes other solar systems will have strange and wonderful stuff that we don't have.

It is very cool to imagine two Sun's crossing the sky every day. What a wonderful thought......and now we know that it really does happen in other places!

John.

The "nearly circular" question could be answered if the times when the planet goes behind the sun provides enough drop in luminosity to detect, unlikely for an Earth-size planet. Joe

Behind or in front of? Cannot understand.
Tullio

Joe, Thank you for the reply. I am eager to see more results, one way or the other. It would be great to send a probe that would report back in my lifetime if we find a promising target near in.

We would have to jack up our propulsion methods to achieve the necessary speeds.