Download Asteroseismology and Planet Detection Results from the Kepler Mission Dr. Ronald Gilliland

Asteroseismology and Planet Detection Results
from the Kepler Mission
Dr. Ronald Gilliland
Astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute
Co-Investigator, Kepler Mission
The Kepler Mission launched March 6, 2009 with a prime 3.5 year goal of finding new worlds
like our own orbiting distant stars. Kepler is essentially a 1-meter aperture, 95 mega-pixel
camera that takes repeated 30 minute exposures of the same 10x10 degree field of view
almost continuously throughout its life. Some 150,000 stars are thus monitored and the
signature of an Earth-like planet would be 0.01% dimming of light for a star, lasting 10 hours
and repeating yearly. Finding true Earth-analogs via the transit technique will require data
from the full mission since three successive events are a minimal enabling requirement. I will
report on progress during the first year in detecting and verifying a number of shorter period,
larger planets, and discuss the upcoming work needed to find and verify Earth-like planets.
Some early astrophysical discoveries will be noted. A secondary goal of Kepler is to study the
host stars of planets, and one of the prime approaches for this is via asteroseismology. I will
report on early results for which detection of stellar oscillations using Kepler data has provided
much refined stellar properties, and outline future goals in this area.
Kepler is already providing detections of physical phenomena first made possible by its unique
combination of high precision and extensive time-series photometric coverage.
4pm, Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Carlson Auditorium
Center for Imaging Science, Bldg. 76
www.cis.rit.edu/seminar
for up-to-date seminar schedule, video archives, and abstracts
College of Science