PHYSICS AESTROMICAL

INVESTIGATORY PROJECT
NAME – PRINCE BARAIYA
CLASS-12 A
SUBJECT – AESTROMICAL
INVESTIGATORY PROJECT
ROLL NO. - 32
USING KEPLER SPACE TELESCOPE
DATA TO IDENTIFY AN EXOPLANET
ABSTRACT
• The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched
by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named
after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on
March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal
investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine years of operation,
the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and
NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018.
Designed to survey a portion of Earth's region of the Milky Way
to discover Earth-size exoplanets in or near habitable zones
and estimate how many of the billions of stars in the Milky Way
have such planets, Kepler's sole scientific instrument is a
photometer that continually monitored the brightness of
approximately 150,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of
view. These data are transmitted to Earth, then analyzed to
detect periodic dimming caused by exoplanets that cross in
front of their host star. Only planets whose orbits are seen
edge-on from Earth can be detected. During its over nine and
a half years of service, Kepler observed 530,506 stars and
detected 2,662 planets.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Vanderburg, Andrew. (n.d.). Transit Light Curve Tutorial. Retrieved December 16,
2019.
• This is the home for Kepler data.
• Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). (n.d.). MAST Data. Retrieved
December 16, 2019.
• In this list of exoplanets, find which Kepler targets have exoplanets here. Planets
detected by Kepler will have names that begin with "Kepler" or "K2."
• Wikipedia Contributors. (2019, December 8). Lists of exoplanets. Wikipedia: The
Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 16, 2019.