Related Content
Search Google Scholar for:
More Information
Related Jobs from ScienceCareers
|
Originally published in Science Express on 7 January 2010
Science 19 February 2010:
Vol. 327. no. 5968, pp. 977 - 980
DOI: 10.1126/science.1185402
|
|
Reports
Kepler Planet-Detection Mission: Introduction and First Results
William J. Borucki,1,*
David Koch,1
Gibor Basri,2
Natalie Batalha,3
Timothy Brown,4
Douglas Caldwell,5
John Caldwell,17
Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard,6
William D. Cochran,7
Edna DeVore,5
Edward W. Dunham,8
Andrea K. Dupree,10
Thomas N. Gautier, III,9
John C. Geary,10
Ronald Gilliland,11
Alan Gould,18
Steve B. Howell,15
Jon M. Jenkins,5
Yoji Kondo,29
David W. Latham,10
Geoffrey W. Marcy,2
Søren Meibom,10
Hans Kjeldsen,6
Jack J. Lissauer,1
David G. Monet,12
David Morrison,1
Dimitar Sasselov,10
Jill Tarter,5
Alan Boss,19
Don Brownlee,21
Toby Owen,20
Derek Buzasi,22
David Charbonneau,10
Laurance Doyle,5
Jonathan Fortney,24
Eric B. Ford,13
Matthew J. Holman,10
Sara Seager,25
Jason H. Steffen,26
William F. Welsh,27
Jason Rowe,1
Howard Anderson,2
Lars Buchhave,10
David Ciardi,28
Lucianne Walkowicz,2
William Sherry,15
Elliott Horch,23
Howard Isaacson,2
Mark E. Everett,14
Debra Fischer,16
Guillermo Torres,10
John Asher Johnson,28
Michael Endl,7
Phillip MacQueen,7
Stephen T. Bryson,1
Jessie Dotson,1
Michael Haas,1
Jeffrey Kolodziejczak,30
Jeffrey Van Cleve,5
Hema Chandrasekaran,5
Joseph D. Twicken,5
Elisa V. Quintana,5
Bruce D. Clarke,5
Christopher Allen,31
Jie Li,5
Haley Wu,5
Peter Tenenbaum,5
Ekaterina Verner,32
Frederick Bruhweiler,32
Jason Barnes,33
Andrej Prsa34
The Kepler mission was designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets in and near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The habitable zone is the region where planetary temperatures are suitable for water to exist on a planet’s surface. During the first 6 weeks of observations, Kepler monitored 156,000 stars, and five new exoplanets with sizes between 0.37 and 1.6 Jupiter radii and orbital periods from 3.2 to 4.9 days were discovered. The density of the Neptune-sized Kepler-4b is similar to that of Neptune and GJ 436b, even though the irradiation level is 800,000 times higher. Kepler-7b is one of the lowest-density planets (~0.17 gram per cubic centimeter) yet detected. Kepler-5b, -6b, and -8b confirm the existence of planets with densities lower than those predicted for gas giant planets.
 ett Field, CA 94035, USA.
2 University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
3 San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA.
4 Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Goleta, CA 93117, USA.
5 SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
6 Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
7 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
8 Lowell Observatory, Flagsta, AZ 86001, USA.
9 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
10 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
11 Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
12 United States Naval Observatory, Flagsta, AZ 86001, USA.
13 University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.
14 Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
15 National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
16 Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
17 York University, North York, M3J 1P3 Ontario, Canada.
18 Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
19 Carnegie Institute of Washington, Washington, DC 20015 USA.
20 University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI 96720 USA.
21 University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
22 Eureka Scientific, Oakland, CA 94602, USA.
23 Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT 06515, USA.
24 University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
25 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
26 Fermilab, Batavia, IL 60510, USA.
27 San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA.
28 Exoplanet Science Institute/Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
29 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20025, USA.
30 Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35805, USA.
31 Orbital Sciences, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
32 Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064, USA.
33 University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA.
34 Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: William.J.Borucki{at}nasa.gov
Read the Full Text
|
|
