NASA's New Telescope Finds Exoplanet Atmosphere

celticryan writes "NASA's new telescope has made a promising discovery. 'As NASA's first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene,' said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'Detecting this planet's atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only a taste of things to come. The planet hunt is on!'"

Re:Deju Vu?

[ksatyr]

Shhhh, we're hunting pwanets, not wabbits.

Re:Hot Jupiter, yawn

[grub]

One day I expect Kepler to discover an Earth-like planet with an Earth-like atmosphere and the public won't even care. Getting funding to image the surface of that planet will be an uphill battle and even if the returned images show undoubted proof of intelligent life, people still won't care.

Sadly, I think you're right.

NASA will have to pay money to Big Media for a spot on a reality show. Two morbidly obese women will be mud wrestling... the camera pulls back and Paris Hilton is now in the foreground saying "Life on other planets is hot! Drink Red Bull!"

.

Re:Impressive light curve! Kepler reboots?

[acehole]

Anyway, I've been following the Kepler program on their web site and have read of a couple of "reboots" where they had to put the spacecraft into safe mode. Anyone know if they've found/fixed the problem? It's not good to have a program specifically designed for 3+ years of non-stop continuous observation to have intermittent gaps in its observations!

NASA should have unticked the "apply updates automatically" those service packs are a killer.

Re:lame

[TimeTraveler1884]

I have to apologize. After reading the "smelloscope" tag under the summary, I could not help but hear the voice of Professor Farnsworth in my head while reading your post. For some reason, I can't read your post any other way now. I'm sure your post is well thought-out, and indeed informative, but I just can't take it seriously with that voice!

Re:lame

[feepness]

That's ok. I'm reading your post as Leela.