Confirmation of Earth Sized Candidates For The Kepler Project

now let talk about TESS and why NASA made a dig mistake for not chosen TESS first...

look the article of centauri dreams about what is TESS were capable to do

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=8340

and was my opinion there:

"since the last time that NASA send man the to moon in 1972,NASA don´t know doing science and human exploration business,for call the public attention in space science and tecnology…

The TESS mission would be a great mission that maybe would discovery a earth-like planets around a M dwarf star habitable zones,and now i don´t think that we go have so early a chance of, at same have a Mission like TESS, and a follow up Mission for search for a pontetial astrobiological activety of the transit M dwarf planet atmophere like JWST , at same time….

i´m very disappoint with the NASA on the last years especiality in science mission and human exploration and USA govemanent funds to NASA

NASA once again show that don´t doing bussines and manage the govenament money for atract the public interest for science exploration…

the public are interest in planets around other stars and life on this planet FIRST! and Black holes after…"


so as you see NASA chosen,the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism SMEX mission,in wrong time,because the TESS,could found some potential habitable planet around red dwarf,...even a exomoon around a gas giant of a red dwarf star,like exciting news about the possibility of screening the atmosphere of exomoons for habitability

Characterizing Habitable Exo-Moons

http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.3484

and the Pathways Towards Habitable Moons

http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.5170

i have nothing against SMEX mission,but this mission probabily bring only tecnical science paper, that don't atract the public interest... and the not scientist people that pay tax for this missions,and this people a more interest right now in life on this exoplanets

i think that we go to lose a gold oportunity to for discovery life in other planet at cheap price...

because ever if they launch TESS mission later,maybe it's too later for JWST follow up on this planets because,the helion that keep the telescope cool maybe end, before a mission like TESS be launch


so like said in my opinion NASA don't know do bussines,not for the scientist,for the astronauts and not for the people public interest

JIMO was way over technical. A fusion reactor on a huge spacecraft like that was very unrealistic, and its over-ambition begged its death.
TPF is waiting for targets. The mission to find those targets is SIM (or any of its derivatives). SIM is waiting on Kepler data. I think TPF should stay on hold until not only the technology is established, but targets are found as well.

As much as I agree with you that I would love to see these things come true, I don't believe in Santa Clause. NASA can only do what it is funded to do, and it will get a steady (even if low) paycheck. This isn't NASA's fault.

Yes, I'd love to see more exoplanet research from NASA, but there's only so much they can do. Exoplanets aren't why NASA exists anymore than studying the Aurorae of Earth, the dynamics of non-fixed wing design for aircraft, sonic boom propagation, or the corona of the sun. NASA does a lot of things. This is like complaining that a computer is worthless because it can't run Minesweeper properly.

Daniel wrote:

i think that we go to lose a gold oportunity to for discovery life in other planet at cheap price...

The planets aren't going anywhere, are they? It's not like if we don't launch TESS, TPF, and SIM in the next six months, all the exoplanets will self-destruct.

[quote="Sirius_Alpha"]JIMO was way over technical. A fusion reactor on a huge spacecraft like that was very unrealistic, and its over-ambition begged its death.
]

in apollo times USA people wasn't think like that....like kennedy said:we go to the moon it's not because is easy,it's because i'ts hard...

same should be valid for other mission like JIMO...

everybody knows that JIMO it's been cancel it's not because is over technical (the Russians are prove of this because in this case of nuclear reactor in space they are far beyond US tecnology,they did a lot test in the past),it's because USA politics space exploration change, George.W .Bush new vision of space exploration,

the worse thing that US can't keep JIMO going as we know,and can't keep new vision of human exploration, thanks US politics


open your eyes! everybody knows how US politics leave space progam in a very bad situation

[quote]Sirius_Alpha wrote:


I don't believe in Santa Clause. NASA can only do what it is funded to do, and it will get a steady (even if low) paycheck. This isn't NASA's fault.

[quote]

i never said that it's NASA fault,it's USA politcs FAULT,and president Barack Obama it's one of this guy that just don't care for NASA,before he win as president he show what he plan for NASA,that plan was cut the NASA burget that is supposed use to rerturn the man to the moon,and use that money for education...and then he create a paradox here.

when i see that, i said to myself that guy not go to be a good president to US space program....

as we see now he is not a good president,in therms of space progam,and there is not excuses because the crises.

USA spend 500 bilhons dollars for year on the army,that where i come from call paranoiacs,USA politics it's so worry about they army,that look like that some alien invasion go to attack US territory,that it's really unrealistc and paranoia..

if USA just take 100 bilhons dollars of this money for space program would still have the powerful army in the world, and the great space program too,because the way that the things going, china go to be next space power in the world we can't underestimate the other countries

USA space progam,in some project like send man back to moon,must be treat like state top priority,that can't be change for the next,next and next president,and recieve a propely burget for the project.

scientist must fight for some project,and attract the puplic interest for some missions,then this this way the NASA project go on.because the not scientist,many of this people don't care for space progam,and exoplanet it's a good catch in terms of the puplic interest,and politics like Hubble telescope is today.

it's not just science and scientist envove here,it's a lot politics,and not science people envove,and the scientist must learn how convince the puplic and politics for they projects,like Carl sagan was good for that...

Sirius_Alpha wrote:

Daniel wrote:

i think that we go to lose a gold oportunity to for discovery life in other planet at cheap price...

The planets aren't going anywhere, are they? It's not like if we don't launch TESS, TPF, and SIM in the next six months, all the exoplanets will self-destruct.

well you right planet aren't going anywhere,but they USA earth dollar goes...because could use few Tax money and do great space missions

USA prestige in space exploration goes...because USA people is tired to see they tax money be spend to put spaceship on low earth orbit to do nothing that really atract the pulblic interest, and because there is other countries out there that could set the foot on the moon and build something there first,ever in mars

Daniel wrote:

far as i know TESS would detect earth-size planets around our neighborhood stars

To be an all sky mission TESS would adjust its view sector every orbit.

It might pick up the first transit of a very large Earth but no way to confirm.

TheoA wrote:

It might pick up the first transit of a very large Earth but no way to confirm.

For many of the bright stars, it is true that gaining a radial-velocity-derived mass would be difficult. Some of the brighter stars are, however, sun-like.

Sirius,

Not sure what you mean. Can you clarify.

Are you saying the Earths RV signal can be picked out with our present technology.

This would not be true.

Earths can't be picked out of radial velocity data if the planet is unknown. But if you get the transit ephemeris, you know that orbital phase to expect the planet at all points in the radial velocity graph. This allows much weaker signals to have much higher confidence than otherwise possible.

Have you ever toyed with Systemic? You can fit Earths and sub-Earths to all sorts of data. Imagine doing that, and knowing exactly where to expect the radial velocity curve based on the transit ephemeris. It makes what you can find much easier. You're no longer trying to fit RV curves to data when you have no reason to believe a terrestrial planet exists, but rather, fitting an RV curve that you know must exist to the data.

Edasich has done work with fitting terrestrial mass planets to many red dwarfs using published radial velocity data. But since the data is sparse, not a whole lot can be said about whether the planet really exists. There's a False Alarm Probability that you may often read of in the papers about new planet discoveries. Planets don't get announced with false alarm probabilities greater than single-digit percentages (I don't think I've ever seen a planet published with anything more than a 1% FAP). Imagine getting an RV planet with a FAP of 80%.... but detecting transits. That FAP goes way down and you can thus confidently publish planets with masses much lower than you otherwise could.

The RV mass will be a little hazy but you can definitely set limits to it.


As for what you were writing. You spoke of TESS, which will target bright stars. Both transit light curves and (for sun-like stars) radial velocity curves will have a higher signal-to-noise ratio than dimmer stars. I took your comment to imply that if a terrestrial-sized (and perhaps mass) planet were to transit, say, Tau Ceti or 61 Vir, that it would not be confirmable.

Sirius_Alpha there is 3 things that you don't take under consideration

1 the Astro-comb radial velocity tecnology it's underway

http://www.physorg.com/news126370110.html

http://www.physorg.com/news126370110.html</A> and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro-comb</A>

this new tecnology could confirm earth mass planet,especiality around red dwarf stars

and the radial velocity spectrograph EXPRESSO, that use know tecnology,and already been approve by ESO,that have a precision of a least 10cm/seg of radial velocity and could confirm earth mass planet around G type star on the habitable zone in our neighborhood,of course around K and M dwarf habitable zone could be hard confirm this planets but far from impossible.


http://espresso.astro.up.pt/science.php</A>

curiosity: it's so precise spectrograph that could ever detect extragalatic planet around stars on SMC and LMC Galaxy!

"The search for Jupiter-mass planets around giant or bright rho-Ap stars in the closest nearby galaxies like the LMC and SMC "

see in: http://espresso.astro.up.pt/science.php?show=chapter4

2 with JWST could be use to detect and confirm earth-size exoplanet atmosphere around a red dwarf star, that are far diferent atmosphere from white dwarfs and other object that are the same size of a earth-size planet,in this case should be confimation enough,the diference between a cold planet and a for example a white dwarf atmophere

3 if TESS that would look for planet around planet nearby and bright stars,and like your said couldn't be confirm, so imagine Kepler target that a much far way and with lot of faint star...

imagine what CODEX spectrograph with precision of 1cm/seg install on E-ELT telescope that will go to have a primary mirror of 42m could do extrasolar planetary science?

http://www.eso.org/sci/libraries/SPIE2008/7014-52.pdf

Great times we live!

it's not like a star trek times of exploration but this is ok for now

Sirius_Alpha wrote:

The RV mass will be a little hazy but you can definitely set limits to it.

Typically you need a S/N ratio of at least 3 for scientific publication. Depending on the error bars this might be greater, esp. for RV.

You can certainly propose a planet but can't confirm it in that case.

Again our technology is not there yet.

Maybe soon, if Daniel's report of the Laser Comb pans out.

But with the transit in the same phase as the radial velocity, you don't need near as much RV data as you already know something exists in that orbital period. The SWEEPS planets, if I recall correctly, have two RV data points that were used to determine their mass.

See Greg's comments below. He explains it better than I ever could.

http://oklo.org/2010/01/04/keplers-first-crop/#comments

Even a 2 m sec -1 is a heroic effort in the best of circumstances with present technology.

An Earth generates a ~ 0.1 m sec -1 RV signal.

We may know there is a planet but can't confirm its properties for some time.

See the Kepler paper on follow up.

They are very much candid in stating they don't have follow up technology yet, but are working on several paths.

I suspect interesting things will continue to be mined out of the COROT and Kepler data for a long time to come even after the missions themselves are over, especially as various technologies improve.

There are still results coming out of the Hipparcos datasets to this day...

Well Dr Michel Mayor is convinced we'll find an Exo-Earth before the start of the 2nd decennium of the 21st century.
Does this mean that the new generation of (higher accuracy) spectrographs will be ready & operational on time (WHT - Canary Islands)?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7002322.ece

Borislav wrote:

Appeared timetable of observant time for first semester 2010


http://nexsci.caltech.edu/missions/KeckSolicitation/proposal-current.shtml

Quote :

2010A</A>

W. Borucki

NASA Ames

Key

Follow-up Observations of Kepler Targets

x

HIRESr

http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/observing/schedule/index.php
Borucki users HIRES 27.04.2010 (1/2 nights), 01.05.2010 (1/2 nights), 04.05.2010(1/2 nights), 25-27.05.2010 (1/2 nights), 28-30.06.2010, 01.07.2010, 24-26.07.2010.

In general approximately 10 observant nights

http://www.not.iac.es/observing/schedules/schedule.php?period=41&output=html
Appeared schedule for telescope NOT on (Period 41: 2010 Apr 1 - Oct 1), which is also involved in the RV-confirmation of the planets Kepler'а on spectrografs FIES.

Program Characterising transiting planet candidates identified by Kepler uses 30.06.2010-05.07.2010, 13-18.08.2010. In total approximately 10 observant nights.

Planet Kepler-7b was confirmed in the NOT-FIES. Star with V=13.3.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0190

Quote :

The FIbre-fed Echelle Spectrograph (FIES) on the 2.5-m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at La Palma, was not originally designed with very precise radial velocities in mind. ... These advantages encouraged us to develop specialized observing procedures and a new data reduction pipeline with the goal of measuring radial velocities to better than 10ms−1 for the relatively faint planet candidates identified by Kepler.

http://keplergo.arc.nasa.gov/CalibrationSN.shtml
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0349

From these two sources, it follows that Kepler could find transits earth-like planets do not have 150 000 stars, about 10 000, which are either brighter than magnitude 12, or are red dwarfs.

In addition article
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0256

Quote :

90% of the 2,665 stars with 11.5 < Kp < 12.5 in the dense main sequence ”finger” are below 30 ppm, 65% are below 25 ppm, 50% are below 23 ppm, and 31% are below 21 ppm (which corresponds to 20 ppm at 6.5 hours). Kepler is achieving extremely high precision over a re-
markably large dynamic range considering that the mission design was driven largely by the 20 ppm, 6.5-hr precision requirement for Kp=12 G2V stars.

Now I understand why it is usually said that Kepler will find 50 analogs Earth. It 10 000 stars multiplied by the 0.5% geometrical probability of transit and 10% of the theoretical frequency of prevalence of such type planets.

You might want to check your math.  10,000 times 0.5% times 10% is 5.

Mongo wrote:

You might want to check your math. 10,000 times 0.5% times 10% is 5.

Thank you. I'm confused. : (
I took a picture from that article (the actual photometry Kepler 1 month observations), and held it the green line to mean the accuracy of photometry at 20 parts per million needed to find a twin of Earth.



In general, it turns out that such precision is available somewhere for 1/10-1/20 the entire sample of stars Kepler. And given the technical problems (breaks for data transmission, safe mode, breakage on camere) analogues of the Earth will be even less.

Recent estimates preparedness new spectrographs.

http://dev-lesia.obspm.fr/PLATO/kickoff/papers/udry.pdf

Quote :

First screening [> 10-20 m/s]
- Tautenburg (Germany) - in use
- Hermes on Mercator (La Palma) - in use
- LCOGT: 6 x 1m + 3 x 2m telescopes with spectrographs - project

Moderate precision [5 – 10 m/s]
- Coralie on Euler 1.2-m Swiss telescope (La Silla, Chile) - in use
- FEROS on the 2.2m (La Silla, Chile) - in use
- SOPHIE on the 193-cm telescope (OHP, France) - in use
- NOT (La Palma, Spain) - in use
- HET (Texas, USA) - in use
- AAT (Siding Spring, Australia) - in use

High-precision RV measurements [1 - 3 m/s]
- HARPS on the ESO 3.6m telescope (La Silla, Chile) - in use
- HARPS-N on the TNG (La Palma, Spain) - on the sky in 2012
- HIRES on Keck (Hawaii, USA) in use
- Carnagie Planet Finder at Magellan (Las Campanas, Chile) - starting

Ultra-high RV precision on quiet stars [10 cm/s - 1m/s]
- ESPRESSO on the ESO VLT (Paranal, Chile) - on the sky in 2015
- New spectrograph on the GranTCan (La Palma, Spain) - project
- CODEX on the E-ELT (Los Armazones, Chile) - project
- GCLEF on GMT (La Campanas, Chile) - project

Infra-Red RV measurements
- CRIRES on the VLT (Paranal, Chile) - in use
- SPIROU on the CFHT (Hawaii, USA) - project
- CARMENES on 4m telescope (Calar Alto, Spain) - project

Any news? February is upcoming!