Kepler Telescope Pictures: Man's Search for Habitable Planets
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Man's search for habitable planets hasn't ended, but at least NASA's Kepler telescope spotted a neighbor in our universe that's right-sized. Actually, make that two neighbors. Kepler-20e -- pictured in concept here -- and 20f are the first planets close to Earth in size that orbit any star other than our own sun. But before you pack your bags and freeze-dried ice cream for the move, pack some heavy-duty sunscreen. Kepler 20e probably is not habitable -- it's about 1400 F (760 C).
Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
It's more likely that Kepler-22b will fit the bill for your interstellar transfer. It was the first planet that the Kepler space observatory confirmed was in the habitable zone of a star much like the sun. This artist's rendering shows a planet similar to Earth, where liquid water could form -- and maybe clouds. Lest you think it's our only shot at finding an Earth twin, think again. Kepler has been busy.
Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
In its first four months on the job, the Kepler spacecraft hunted down 1,235 planets that orbit other suns. This "family portrait" gives an idea of how busy Kepler and NASA have been. Before the space telescope launched and started its planet-seeking expedition, only 500 exoplanets (planets that orbit stars other than the sun) had been discovered -- ever.
Image Credit: Jason Rowe/NASA/Ames
Kepler launched in March 2009 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. A Delta II 7925 rocket carried the Kepler observatory into its orbit.
Image Credit: NASA/Tony Gray
A Delta rocket is pretty powerful, but lifting a mirror powerful enough to discover new planets took some compromise. Corning Glass helped out by making the telescope's mirror 14 percent lighter than a comparably sized solid mirror -- through a honeycomb design.
Image Credit: NASA and Ball Aerospace
A lighter mirror didn't mean shorter-sighted goals, though. Before Kepler's 2009 launch, NASA announced its plans to use the craft to survey at least 100,000 stars. It hasn't disappointed: In its early months, Kepler observed more than 156,000 stars in its field of view.
Image Credit: NASA/Tim Jacobs
Kepler's field of view doesn't begin to cover the entire universe. It's limited to about 10 degrees square in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyrae. This shows Kepler's field of view superimposed on the night sky. One of Kepler's first finds is a microscopic dot just above the plane of the Milky Way.
Image Credit: Carter Roberts
Kepler-10b is the tiny find. It orbits a sun located between Cygnus and Lyrae -- one of the first Kepler spotted as having an exoplanet. Kepler-10b is an excellent example of a rocky planet and its sun is similar to our sun in mass, size and temperature, but nearly 4 billion years older.
Image Credit: NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry
Kepler spots exoplanets by identifying planetary transits. In other words, when a planet crosses the face of its star, the starlight dims slightly -- much like an eclipse effect. This artist's conception shows a situation that might have confused Kepler and NASA astronomers when observed in August 2010: Kepler 11 is a star similar to our sun that has six orbiting planets. That didn't surprise them as much as Kepler-16B.
Image Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle
Several planets around one sun sounds familiar, but how about a planet that orbits two stars? Kepler-16B is called a circumbinary planet, or simply fickle. The orbits of the stars and the planet all closely align, so it formed there instead of being caught up in its double orbit.
Image Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Kepler 22's star system is more like our own than 11 or 16 appear to be -- and it might have a habitable zone. This artist's rendering shows Kepler-22b orbiting its star, which is slightly smaller than the sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the size of Earth and its orbit is 289 days.
Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
With the discoveries Kepler is making, one's vision of the space telescope would be a sleek, highly technical machine, not a bulky tube wrapped in gold "foil" that resembles an item that might appear at a science fair -- or perhaps be served up at a concession. But don't be fooled by Kepler's rough exterior.
Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
The gold wrapping is a solar array -- so this telescope is powerful and efficient. Kepler rolls 90 degrees in orbit every three months to point the solar panels toward the sun. Its more than 2,800 panels produce upward of 1,100 watts of power to keep data flowing from the photometer.
Image Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Kepler's focal plane is relatively small compared with the craft. The entire focal plane -- pictured here -- is about one foot (929 centimeters) square. The four small corner modules are used for guidance and the remaining 21 modules do the observation work. Electronics embedded in the modules convert light to digital data that is analyzed for planet transits.
Image Credit: NASA/Kepler Mission
Here, the "planet candidates" for which Kepler's modules have spotted transit data are represented in the shape of the focal plane. Colors sort them by size; blue dots represent planets sized much like Earth. About 30 candidates had been confirmed as planets through late 2011, and the Kepler team is just getting started. Imagine the possibilities.
Image Credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel
In fact, Kepler already surpasses dreams of the most imaginative minds. Kepler-16b is the most "Tatooine-like" planet because it resembles Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars," a cold world with a gaseous surface. John Knoll of Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., said of the world where two suns set: "…more often than not, scientific discoveries prove to be more spectacular than anything we dare imagine. … Their very existence serves as cause to dream bigger and open our minds to new possibilities beyond what we think we know."
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
There's no doubt Kepler will continue to inform, delight and surprise. The mission's funding is supposed to run out in November 2012, but NASA is hoping to extend it -- until about 2016. The number of planet candidates already has surpassed 2,300.
Now that you've seen the Kepler mission in pictures, test your knowledge of other NASA missions and take our NASA quiz!
Image Credit: NASA/Regina Mitchell-Ryall, Tom Farrar
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