The Kepler mission: a wide-field-of-view photometer designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets around solar-like stars

摘要: NASA's Kepler Mission is designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size and larger planets in habitable zone solar-like stars. It uses transit photometry from space planet size relative its star orbital period. From these measurements, those complementary ground-based observations planet-hosting stars, Kepler's third law, actual planet, position zone, presence other can be deduced. The photometer around a 0.95 m aperture wide field-of-view (FOV) Schmidt type telescope with large array CCD detectors continuously monitor 100,000 stars single FOV for four years. To detect terrestrial planets, differential obtain precision 20 ppm 12th magnitude combination number that must monitored get statistically significant estimate Earth respect Sun, minimum photoelectrons required recognize signal while maintaining low false-alarm rate, areal density target differing brightness are all critical design.