Kepler telescope glimpses population freefloating planets
Kepler has given us a tantalizing first glimpse of the small/rocky planet population and some of the results have been absolutely awesome (Figure 1). Whilst these techniques had been applied to the Sun and individual stars, Kepler has been used to derive stellar parameters for hundreds of stars at a level never before achieved en masse. To me though, Kepler’s greatest result is really the ubiquity of exoplanets specifically small planets.Īlmost as impressive has been Kepler’s contribution to the proving of stellar asteroseismology. estimate of eta-Earth (number of habitable zone planets per star) and the masses of low-mass planets, Kepler’s place in history is assured. The evaporation and breakup of small planetsĪnd so, while some results are less good, e.g.The detection and modelling of the first circumbinary systems.The application of transit timing techniques to derive planetary masses and the recovery of unseen components.
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The commonality of multi-planet systems.The list of “firsts” from Kepler is truly amazing:
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After saying that, ground-based radial velocity surveys had already indicated the existence of super-Earths-a class of planet not found in our solar system (ignoring Planet 9!), and the first exo-rocky planet discovered was found through the French-ESA CoRoT mission (Corot-7b). In particular, much of what we know about rocky planets has come from this mission. There can be no doubt that NASA’s Kepler mission has been a resounding success.