NASA finds potential planetary bonanza

NASA's Kepler orbiting telescope has found more than 700 objects in a far-off region of our galaxy that could be planets, the space agency has announced.

In the first release of data since the mission began 15 months ago, the Kepler team said it has discovered 706 "viable exoplanet candidates with sizes as small as that of the Earth to larger than that of Jupiter." The majority of the planetary candidates are the size of Neptune or smaller, they said.

Source

A very interesting article that I stumbled across and the posted little blurb above does not do the full report justus .

I wonder just how fast is telescope tech advancing and realistically what is the " best " image " we " can expect to see of some alien world orbiting some distant sun ?

Space exploration is something that I , like most of you , have been interested in every since childhood , I just wish more was put into space exploration .

Maybe now they'll have a target to direct signals to. That's pretty incredible to be honest, to think that our space brothers might have been so close this whole time.

Sucks we wont know the best stuff until Feb 2011. I want to know now... But very cool

next thing you know life is discovered on other planets

Originally posted by pavelivanov22
next thing you know life is discovered on other planets

That's great hopefully we'll be able to get some radio telescopes focusing on that area. I can't wait til we start getting some pictures back from kepler! Why would the discovery of life on other planets be a bad thing? It would be one of the most profound announcements ever made. It would be one of the few things that could potentially make man stop killing his fellow man!

reply to post by cosmo740


what happens then?
anything?

reply to post by The Drunken Cow


takes 3 years for kepler to confirm earth size planets in earth like orbits around stars like our sun. All these planets so far will be very close to the star. Orbiting in 15 days or less.

kepler is designed to tell us how common "earths" are in the whole galaxy. Very exciting


[edit on 17-6-2010 by yeti101]

We won't be seeing any images of exoplanets. All of the detections are made by indirect methods; measuring the wobble of a star being affected by the gravity of its planets, noting a very slight dimming of the star as its planet passes between it and us.

So, no pictures of planets. They're just too dang small and too dang far away. All we get to see is squiggly lines of data. But a lot of them!

reply to post by Phage


How right you are and based on my limited understanding of this topic , is there not also a practice of analyzing the respective " planets " light spectrum in an attempt to detect various elements that might be present ?

What is the likelihood that one day via a telescope we may get some type of planetary image , given just how dam hard it seems now ?

How do we build a telescope thats not a telescope , nor effected by the many obstacles that prevent us from " seeing " these distant planets ?



[edit on 17-6-2010 by Max_TO]

while this is all good and well, we need to concentrate and sending a probe to the nearest stars. we can keep finding planets from now until the end of days but we need to go to one thats close. even if it is a gas giant. thats the first step. or next step. at least IMO

Originally posted by pavelivanov22
next thing you know life is discovered on other planets

Why is that a thumbs down?
It's inevitable.

[edit on 17-6-2010 by Ahmose]

reply to post by Max_TO


the next generation of space telescopes will be able to see the planets directly. Although they will only be a dot of light thats all we need to analyse the chemical composition of the planets atmosphere.

missions like new worlds observer, tpf/ tpf-c etc

they say it will take 4 or 5 decades before we can see clear pictures of exoplanets. Clear enough to make out continents on the surface. Who knows though could be sooner.