1. Goal: To learn about the Kepler Mission and the Transit Method
Objectives:
To learn about the basics of the spacecraft
To understand Mission goal
To learn the reasoning about some of its quirks
To explore what we have found so far from Kepler
To understand the transit/eclipse method

2. Launched
2009 March 6, 10:49 pm EST.

4. NGC 6791
Since in space can measure brightness very accurately

5. Field of View
100,000 stars for Kepler to constantly monitor for 3.5 years

7. Actual images
Black = star

9. Quirks Spacecraft slowly trails earth in orbit
Spacecraft “rolls” every 3 months
Looks at a large
field of view (about
15 degrees) all at
once

10. Transit
When a planet passes in front of a star it partially eclipses the star.
A solar eclipse for example occurs when the moon blocks the sun
Since planets are
small they only
block a small
portion of the star

11. We can tell: Just like before with the wobble method we can determine:
Orbital period
Orbital distance
Mass

12. Difficulties Sunspots can again pose a problem Binary stars
Stellar Flares
Other random activity
Planet has to have orbital plane that makes it pass in front of the star (very limiting)
First one detected Nov, 1999 (discovered using wobble). 2nd was 2002 (first discovered using transit - OGLE-TR-56 b)

13. Initial findings

14. Much more accurate!

15. Candidate vs confirmed
Since NASA wants to see 3 transits per planet.
Found hot Jupiters in months.
Objects in Mercury orbits in about a year
Planets in Earth like orbits in 3 years.

16. Expectations:
100,000 stars
If 10% have planets then 10,000 star systems
However, since Kepler uses transits to find planets only 0.5% of the systems will be detectable.
That gives 500 expected systems to observe.

17. Actual: Candidate exoplanets: 4,706 Confirmed exoplanets: 1,039
Confirmed exoplanets less than twice Earth-size in the habitable zone: 12
So this implies that the % of stars with planets is somewhere between 20% and 80%

20. What Kepler will not be able to do
Observe the atmosphere.
We are still finding the planets indirectly.
The parent stars are too far away and too dim to do detailed analysis from the ground.
Kepler does not take spectrums…

21. Conclusion
We have learned about how to use gravitational lensing as a tool.
We have examined the complications with this style of observation.