The sixteenth observing campaign of the Kepler spacecraft’s K2 extended mission is now underway. The campaign has prospects for discoveries among 30,000 objects in the direction of the constellation Cancer. The cartoon illustrates some of the objects of interest that Kepler is observing for 80 days, from Dec. 7 to Feb. 25, 2018.
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Browsing Posts in Space Station Reports
Some 1,500 light years from Earth, a mystery of stellar proportions is playing out. The world has the chance to watch, as the scientific process and the mystery continue to unfold.
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Kepler’s K2 Mission Continues to Eye New Patches of Sky
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While the mechanics of a total solar eclipse are actually rather mundane, different flavors of this phenomenon make some very sophisticated science possible.
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Researchers have a new model for explaining how clouds move and change shape in brown dwarfs, using insights from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
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In the search for planets similar to our own, an important point of comparison is the planet’s density.
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A conversation with Geert Barentsen, the Guest Observer Office director for the Kepler and K2 mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
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Originally aired on February 27, 2009, a conversation on the Kepler Mission with Principal Investigator William Borucki, Deputy Principal Investigator David Koch, and Kepler Science Council Member Alan Boss from the Carnegie Institute of Washington.
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A conversation with Susan Thompson, Kepler research scientist for the SETI Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
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This diagram illustrates how planets are assembled and sorted into two distinct size classes. First, the rocky cores of planets are formed from smaller pieces. Then, the gravity of the planets attracts hydrogen and helium gas. Finally, the planets are “baked” by the starlight and lose some gas.
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