More ink (w/UPDATE*) : Day 2 of the Kepler Project’s hints of the exo-planetary cornucopia it’s generating
A surprisingly muted response from the overall science press corps is greeting news that the Kepler satellite planet-finding project, as it hoped all along, is gathering a mind-bending sample of worlds around other stars. Not just any planets, but including Earth-sized planets. And not just a few new planets of many sizes, but hundreds so far – with thousands to follow.
Yesterday I posted on the first dribbles of reports on publication by the five-dozen or so astronomers on the team of results from just six weeks of observations, made a year ago. 700+ planet candidates seen. Seven hundred! The thing has been gathering data day in, day out (with a few pauses to fix glitches) ever since, and will keep at it several more years. So far the suspected planets are limited to ones that orbit their stars fast – still to come are, one hopes, some that take a year or so and thus will be at distances that make biology and terrestrial-type weather seem plausible. Most news has focussed on a worthy, but narrow, aspect – the team’s decision to sit on much of these data sets until it chews them over for itself, which could take months.
I hear from inside the project that another announcement is planned for October, featuring what are already hinting to be “extraordinary planets.” A bigger publication of many more planets, their reality nailed down by additional observing with ground based telescopes and by deeper analysis of the measurements from Kepler, is due in February 2011. Critics say they ought to release raw data fast as they come in. That’d be fun. One wonders, by the way, how well this team of dozens of astronomers at dozens of institutions will be at keeping much of the number piles under wraps anyway. It’s already going to a fair-sized sampling of professional astronomers who are deeply absorbed in the exo-planet hunt. Some of them are sure to share files with outside colleagues, one guesses. I dunno if there’s any bag that can hold this many cats.
In the meantime, press coverage beyond what we listed yesterday:
- MSNBC Cosmic Log – Alan Boyle: An avalanche of alien planets ; Almost lost in Kepler’s glare is another recent announcement of new planets from a somewhat similar project using the European CoRoT satellite. Boyle wraps them together nicely.
- Science News – Ron Cowen: Kepler Craft Reports Apparent Planetary Bonanza ; He quotes one astronomer, not entirely disinterested as she’s on the team, saying that the discoveries rolling in already are “massively historic.”
- Los Angeles Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Orbiting telescope spots possible planets ; A source tells him “this is the single largest announcement of planets that’s ever happened,” and he’s not on the team. Maugh also gets in a practical reason why the team is holding some data close – to plump the results with ground based telescopes they need to be able to see them easily, which won’t happen till this summer as the target area moves into the night sky.
- San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: Kepler space telescope finds possible planets ;
- USA Today – Dan Vergano: NASA: Neptune-sized planets orbiting other stars ; Yes, we knew that. Vergano handles this with a small blog post. His lede repeats the underwhelming “Neptune-sized” metric. The bulk of the short story gets things in better perspective, but the top would have been better to declare excitement over discovery that the smaller the planets that can be measured, the more there seem to be – and well below the size of Neptune.
- Wired Science – Alexis Madrigal: Exoplanet Hunter’s First Data Withholds the Good Stuff ; Madrigal gives the grumpiness over data sharing a good airing – and also provides a small but clear dose of explanation how the mission works and why it has to take a long time to get to the really, really good stuff no matter who is doing it.
- Columbus Dispatch – Caitlin McGlade: Telescope sees possible planets near 706 stars / But data on 400 other stars kept for study by NASA ; Good effort at a regional paper but with a small, hasty trip-up: the 706 figure comprises the 400 or so targets withheld. They aren’t “other” stars. On the good side, many reports say the data include evidence for 706 candidate planets. Not quite so. The number applies to stars with evidence for planets, and several seem to host multiple-planet systems. Ergo, if they all pay off, that’d be more than 706 planets. McGlade gets that part correct.
*UPDATES:
- AAAS ScienceNOW – Richard Kerr: Kepler Unveils First, Partial List of Exoplanet Candidates ; A brief, without hinted criticism of the withholding of data.
Grist for the Mill:
NASA Press Release ; preprint of paper. CoRoT Press Release (The French-led project reports six new planets).
Pic - Source. Not from Kepler, but from NASA’s TRACE satellite: an image of the sun with Venus crossing it in transit six years ago. This is about what Kepler is trying to see from thousands of light years away in the constellation Cygnus where 156,000 stars are being monitored, detecting such a transit only from the slight dimming of the star’s overall output. That’s some delicate work.
- Charlie Petit
