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Kepler Mission: A Technical OverviewThe Kepler Mission is a Discovery-class mission designed to continuously monitor the brightness of 100,000 solar-like stars to detect the transits of Earth-size and larger planets. It is a wide field of view photometer Schmidt-type telescope with an array of 42 CCDs. It has a 0.95 m aperture and 1.4 m primary and is designed to attain a photometric precision of 2 parts in 10(exp 5) for 12th magnitude solar-like stars for a 6 hr transit duration. It will continuously observe 100,000 main-sequence stars from 9th to 14th magnitude in the Cygnus constellation for a period of four years with a cadence of 4/hour. An additional 250 stars can be monitored at a cadence of l/minute to do astro-seismology of stars brighter than 11.5 mv. The photometer is scheduled to be launched into heliocentric orbit in 2007. A ground-based program to classify all 225,000 stars in the FOV and to do a detailed examination of a subset of the stars that show planetary companions is also planned.
Document ID
20030053067
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Borucki, W. J.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2003
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: Eddington Workshop
Location: Palermo
Country: Italy
Start Date: April 8, 2003
End Date: April 10, 2003
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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