Kepler Space telescope working already

[n2doc]

By Alex Antunes | April 17th 2009 10:34 AM

Kepler has First Light. It is On! Team is a Go! Photons are Arriving!

This provocativly-titled NASA release states "NASA's Kepler Captures First Views of Planet-Hunting Territory", and has a good explanation of Kepler's capabilities. What I wish to tackle is why Kepler matters.

Kepler is a new space telescope with an awesomely wide field of view, seeing a huge 100 square degrees in a single frame, then zooming in closer with two other 'scopes. It is primarily a planet-hunting mission, but there will be much good science coming from Kepler-- some of which we can't even imagine yet.

In an earlier rant I decried overuse of the term 'first', but first light events are indeed worthy of their name. Rocket science is hard, and every satellite is a tiny bundle of risks tossed into harsh vacuum. You never know whether the instruments will function, and (if you aren't HST) there isn't a handy space engineer able to do repairs.

So first light means either "it worked" or "we're screwed". In the five satellite telescope missions I've worked on, there has always been two tension points. Did it launch, and do we have first light? With my most recent, STEREO, there were actually 16 'first lights', since each of the 2 satellites held 8 detectors. All worked, and our emotions shifted from 'will anything work' fear, to 'we have a mission!', to 'holy cannoli, we're 100%'! Fun excitement.

more:

http://www.scientificblogging.com/daytime_astronomer/kepler_hunter_team_z_go


The area pictured is 0.2 percent of Kepler's full field of view, and shows hundreds of stars in the constellation Lyra. The image has been color-coded so that brighter stars appear white, and fainter stars, red. It is a 60-second exposure, taken on April 8, 2009, one day after the spacecraft's dust cover was jettisoned.

[BlueJazz]

1. Cool!....Are those lines (at 1 inch from top and 2 1/2 from left side) and

...at bottom right "Markers" or guide stars ? :)

[Bill McBlueState]

2. probably a very bright star

that saturated the detector a little bit.

[Phoonzang]

3. I wish it wouldn't take 3 years to get the results, but when we do, I'm positive

that we'll be in for some pretty big surprises. Hopefully the results will push NASA and Congress to fund the Terrestrial Planet finders so we can actually see how many of these worlds are habitable (or inhabited).

[joshcryer]

4. I think we are going to be completely and utterly blown away. Though it may take 5 years.

Kepler is just doing a general survey of potential candidates, after which we will have to do more close examinations to really get a good idea as to what's out there (ie, another 2 years or more to confirm the results).

So in 5 years, 2019, we'll have yet another part of the Drakes equation filled in with a reasonable number.