 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
'Stunning' images of distant planet sent by Kepler scope
Washington (AFP) Aug 6, 2009 Five months after it was launched on a mission to find earth-like planets, the Kepler space telescope has sent back to Earth high-precision images of a planet some 1,000 light years away, NASA said Thursday. But the real excitement at NASA was over how well Kepler was working, and the promise it holds for the future. With Kepler only in the calibration phase, the telescope, which was launched in March on a mission to find earth-like planets in the galaxy, sent back to Earth highly precise images of a planet with the unromantic name of HAT-P-7-B. The images of the so-called "hot Jupiter" planet located about 1,000 light years (around 5.9 quadrillion miles, 9.5 quadrillion kilometers) from Earth were "the first time anyone has seen light from this planet," said William Borucki, the principal science investigator for the Kepler mission and lead author of a report that will be published Friday in Science. But while the scientists were enthusiastic about Kepler's discovery of optical light from HAT-P-7-B -- Carnegie Institution astrophysicist Alan Boss called it "stunning indeed" -- they were even more excited by the fact that Kepler was working, and working well. "The real headline is Kepler works," said Boss. "The implication from this is that Kepler has the ability to detect the transit of an earth-size planet passing in front of a sun-type star producing a very tiny dimming. "Kepler was launched not just to find exo-planets but its prime mission is to count how many earths there are around sun-like stars in our region of the galaxy. We now know Kepler can do it," said Boss. The data were gathered by Kepler during the first 10-days of data-gathering, boding well for the next few years that the telescope will spend trained on the same spot in space, taking in about 100,000 stars around the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of the Milky Way. "The observation demonstrates the extremely high precision of the measurements made by the telescope, even before its calibration and data analysis software were finished," NASA said in a statement. At a cost of nearly 600 million dollars, Kepler is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours. It is equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space -- a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices (CCDs). NASA scientists expects to be able to say by 2012 if there are "lots of earths in our galaxy or we are alone," thanks to data sent to Earth by Kepler. Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Lands Beyond Beyond - extra solar planets - news and science Life Beyond Earth
Twin Stars Form Solar SystemMoffett Field CA (SPX) Jul 09, 2009 Two University of Hawai'i at Manoa astronomers have found a binary star-disk system in which each star is surrounded by the kind of dust disk that is frequently the precursor of a planetary system. Doctoral student Rita Mann and Dr. Jonathan Williams used the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawaii to make the observations. A binary star system consists of two stars bound together by ... read more |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2009 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Google
Facebook