NASA's Kepler Mission (Fig. 1) has been wildly successful in discovering exoplanets. This paper summarizes the mission goals, briefly explains the transit method of finding exoplanets and design of the mission, provides some key findings, and describes useful education materials available at the Kepler website.
References
1.
A.
Wolszczan
, “Confirmation of Earth-mass planets orbiting the millisecond pulsar PSR B1257 + 12
,” Sci.
264
(5158
), 538
–542
(April 1994
). 2.
Michael
Mayor
and Didier
Queloz
, “A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star
,” Nature
378
, 355
–359
(Nov. 23, 1995
). 3.
Michael C.
LoPresto
and Rachel
McKay
, “Detecting our own solar system from afar
,” Phys. Teach.
42
, 208
–211
(April 2004
). 4.
Geoffrey
Marcy
, http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/fop/.5.
David G.
Koch
et al., “Kepler Mission design, realized photometric performance, and early science
,” Astrophys. J.
713
(2
), 79
–86
(April 2010
). 6.
7.
William J.
Borucki
et al., “Kepler Planet-Detection Mission: Introduction and first results
,” Sci.
327
(5968
), 977
–980
(Feb. 19, 2010
). 8.
Kepler website FAQ B7, http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/faq/#b7.
9.
Kepler's Second Light: How K2 Will Work, http://kepler.nasa.gov/images/k2_explained_25nov_story_2-full.jpg and http://keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov/K2/.
10.
Peter
Newbury
, “Exploring the solar system with a human orrery
,” Phys. Teach.
48
, 573
–577
(Dec. 2010
). 11.
D. J.
Des Marais
et al., “Remote sensing of planetary properties and biosignatures on extrasolar terrestrial planets
,” Astrobiol.
2
, 153
–181
(2002
). 12.
Kepler website, http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.
© 2015 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2015
American Association of Physics Teachers
AAPT members receive access to The Physics Teacher and the American Journal of Physics as a member benefit. To learn more about this member benefit and becoming an AAPT member, visit the Joining AAPT page.