| 30 May |
Kepler’s First Images |
Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has taken its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for Earth like planets.
These images show Kepler’s target which is s patch of sky in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way (our galaxy). One image shows millions of stars in Kepler’s full field of view, whilst tow others zoom in on portions of the larger region. Further images can be seen online.
One of the images from Kepler shows its entire field of viewwhich is a 100-square-degree portion of the sky. The region is estimated 4.5 million stars, more than 100,000 of which were selected as ideal candidates for planet hunting.
Two other views focus on just one-thousandth of the full field of view. In one image, a cluster of stars located about 13,000 light-years from Earth, called NGC 6791, can be seen in the lower left corner. The other image zooms in on a region containing a star called Tres-2, with a known Jupiter-like planet orbiting every 2.5 days.
Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years searching more than 100,000 pre-selected stars for signs of planets. It is expected to find a variety of worlds, from large, gaseous ones, to rocky ones as small as Earth. The mission is the first with the ability to find planets like ours .
To find the planets, Kepler will stare at one large patch of sky for its entire lifetime. It will be looking for periodic changes in the light from the stars that occur as planets circle in front of their stars and partially block the light. Its 95-megapixel camera, the largest ever launched into space, can detect tiny changes in a star’s brightness of only 20 parts per million.
Over the next few weeks Kepler’s instruments will be calibrated. Once this has been done then Kepler will begin planet hunting.
Kepler is one of NASA’s Discovery missions. Ames is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.
