Nasa's Kepler Mission

A red dwarf star’s HZ, for example, would be much closer to the star itself compared with that of our sun. It is also important to determine the planet’s size and mass, which is imperative in deciding whether it can sustain an atmosphere. Maintaining an atmosphere is essential for life to exist and small a planet with a small gravitational force at its surface may not be capable of retaining one. The Kepler transit data can only measure planet masses, diameters, orbital periods, and parent star types and although this information is useful for determining habitable zones, further data is required to determine true habitability. The latter can be done by studying the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere.

This implies that the Kepler 11 planetary system is very much like our solar system. The distance (m) of Kepler-11b

The Kepler Mission (NASA Discover mission #10) is designed to survey a portion of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of our galaxy’s billions of stars have such planets. Results from this mission will allow the placing of our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the galaxy.

As a member that is part of the UC’s Lick Observatory “Planet Hunter Team, I have found a possible planetary system that may contain a planet. From my further research, I discovered that the planet may support life, such as bacteria and plants. After confirming with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute about intelligent life, I eventually decided to want to discuss intelligent life through a scientific process. I will use the Drake Equation to give us the possibility that intelligent life can emit signals to reveal any existence. The equation is given as N= R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L. The calculations of each variables will help me understand what is being contributed into calculating the chance of any signals being detected and the calculated result will determined the conclusion of intelligent life existing. Nevertheless, this is just an estimation for the possibility of any life as the Drake Equation may or may not be as reliable as we may expect it to be.

Which proves that the distance of an exoplanet to its host star is important for astronomers to look for when finding Earth-like exoplanets. Astronomers use a term called the goldilocks zone to determine if an exoplanet can form liquid water on its surface. A goldilocks zone is simply a distance that an exoplanet must be to form liquid water, and the goldilocks zone is different depending on the size and temperature of the star that an exoplanet is orbiting. If an exoplanet is orbiting too close around its host star, the temperature on the exoplanet will be too hot to form liquid water ion its surface as the star will cause any liquid water that is on the exoplanets surface to boil into steam. If an exoplanet is too orbiting too far from its host star, it will receive very little starlight and the surface of the exoplanet will be too cold to melt ice into liquid water, so instead the water is frozen to form ice. Astronomers use the transit method to determine how close an exoplanet is orbiting around its host star, and have determined that an exoplanet that orbits once a week will be too close to its host star, and temperatures on the surface will be too hot. An exoplanet

The topic of Mars has long been of interest to astronomers and science fiction enthusiast alike. The premise of another planet supporting life excites people like no other. In 2004, The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, began preliminary science experiments and instrument proposals for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and a robotic space probe mission to Mars. After long testing and development stages, the mission birthed a rover, Curiosity, which was launched in November 2011 and subsequently landed August 6th 2012. As we speak Curiosity is collecting invaluable data for our understanding of mars including: habitability, climate and geology, and possibly setting up a manned mission to mars in the

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, best known as NASA, was first authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 1, 1958. Its first line of operations was to beat the Soviet Union in exploring the solar system.

One of the first thing that he came up with was he made three laws, later known to be called Kepler’s laws. The first law he came up with is that planets rotate in elliptical paths around the sun. Which leads to his second finding and then later became known as his second law, he figured out that planets rotations are faster as they get more near the sun, then slower as they get further away from the sun. His third and final law dealt with the distance between the planet and the sun and how long it completed an orbit around the sun. Kepler used basic and simple mathematics to figure out how planets move, which proves him to be a very intelligent man at his time and in history. Kepler’s discoveries as well as many other astronomers put him and

The topic of finding life on another planet, or seeing if we are the only ones in our Universe has been a mystery to us since the beginning of time. One of the closest findings NASA has found to this topic was exoplanets. Exoplanet is defined as a planet that orbits a star outside the solar system. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope is the main telescope used to search for exoplanets that have similar features to Earth, and habitability on these exoplanets. NASA has found over 2,000 exoplanets so far, and out of those, there are only about eight exoplanets that seem to have a possibility on being a habitable exoplanets. Among these eight, Kepler 62f seems to be the most plausible.

Johannes Kepler was a true reflection of how the renaissance changed human thinking and developed into the rule of "humanism”. Kepler was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and philosopher in the late 1500s and early 1600s. He reflected the main ideals of observing, experimenting and secularism, which are scientific methods that we still use today to inquire more about our world. He helped create the Renaissance idea that the universe was comprehensible through scientific exploration, and set the stage for Isaac Newton's work. He not only discovered and developed the copernican theory, but also created his own on which he discovered that each visible planet in our solar system moved in an elliptical orbit observed by Tycho Brahe.

Exoplanets are interesting to us for a number of reasons. By locating and observing them, we are able to gather a variety of useful data that tells us details about the planet, and then compare and contrast them to other exoplanets, as well as our own planet Earth. These comparisons are our attempt at better understanding the formation history of rocky planets such as the one we live on today, and furthermore understand the future of rocky planets based on their internal composition and proximity to their host stars.

The new planet is known as HD 219134b and it followed NASA's discovery of the planet Kepler-452b, discovered by the Kepler telescope. The Kepler-452b apparently resembles Earth much more than the HD 219134b exoplanet. It maintains a 385 orbit and its host star is only 20 percent brighter than the Earth's sun. However, HD 219134b is much closer to Earth than the Kepler-452b, and for that reason, scientists have high expectations from it.

For many centuries astronomers have asked themselves a simple three worded question “Are we alone?” This simple question has become a controversy all around the globe. Why? Because we want to be able to communicate with other life forms (aliens). However, in order for us to find life in another planet we first have to find planets that have the possibility to support life, nevertheless that question wasn’t answerable until 2009. In 2009 NASA launched a telescope that was going to search for planets. This telescope was known as the Kepler Space Telescope who’s job was to detect earth like planets orbiting a star.

Searching for extrasolar planets using Doppler detection consists of measuring periodic radial velocity variations of a star that are produced from orbiting planets. The spectrographs are sensitive enough to pick up other details about the planets around the star based on their orbital period length. Based on the estimated distance from the star, it can be determined if it is in the habitable zone for liquid water to be present. It cannot be concluded from this information that the planet is habitable and the researchers need to know more physical properties of the planet to determine this.

Uncovering the mysteries of Jupiter is a crucial step for a greater understanding of our Solar System. Being the massive planet that it is, this mysterious planet may hold many answers to how our the Solar System formed and evolved. The understanding of the origins of the universe includes answers even to the formation of Earth itself. Many believe that the research of Jupiter will lead to discoveries on planet formation and the role of giant planets on the formation f stars and other smaller bodies. Mysteries of Jupiter include its composition, what is under its clouds, what is in its core and its magnetic field. Research on the amount of water in the planet will tell us about the