"NASA is expected to make an announcement Thursday on the progress of its Kepler spacecraft, which has been staring at one patch of space for evidence of other worlds.

The space agency has scheduled an afternoon teleconference with reporters to announce the results from Kepler, which include the "discovery of an intriguing planetary system," NASA officials said Monday...."


http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/n ... 00823.html

I can't wait for this, I wonder how much of this announcement has to do with the Former NASA Employee's story

PJ I hope you can come back Thursday and update us on the news

Right at midnight they updated the site to read "NASA to reveal big news today" and made it their lead story; they're really hyping it. It's supposed to be an afternoon teleconference though I haven't heard an exact time yet.

Looks like they're pulling in some big guns for the announcement: "Participating in the teleconference will be senior NASA scientists and Kepler mission researchers, including principal investigator William Borucki of the space agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "


At the same time they starting running this, they also put up a piece saying they'd found "alien solar system (that) looks strikingly like our own." I would have thought that was the Kepler news....except that they put them up simultaneously and separately so it looks like the Kepler piece is something beyond this. Honestly, my first tin foil thought as to why they'd stage the pieces like that was to get the 'alien system' idea in first (I don't remember them referring to extrasolar systems like that before), almost like getting people's perspective ready. Hmmm.

Well you sure have my attention PJ looking forward to your next update!

This one time I am willing to bend the 10% Posting Rule post it all and us Admins will take care of it

It's not the same 'alien system' they were talking about in the other news release this week, but it is another one...the discoveries are suddenly flying fast & furious:


"A tantalizing group of alien planets that may include the smallest, most Earth-sized world yet seen has been discovered around a star like our sun, NASA announced Thursday.

Observations from the Kepler space observatory confirmed two Saturn-sized planets that orbit a star about 2,300 light-years from Earth. They also revealed a candidate for a possible planet roughly the size of Earth within the same system....

....The system's two larger planets – called Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c – were found to have similar diameters, masses and densities as Saturn. The findings represent the first candidate system of multiple planets found by Kepler to be confirmed as such....

....The Kepler planets are the second group of alien worlds to be announced this week.

On Tuesday, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of up to seven planets (though two remain to be confirmed) circling a star 127 light-years from Earth. That find also included a potential Earth-like planet, one that is 1.4 times the mass of Earth...."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/n ... 00826.html

I wonder what this is all leading too

Yeah, me too. I'm not sure what's different about this that they had such a lead-up to it...curious about the agenda behind it all.

Will they Just get on with it and do the disclosure Sh*t already!

What about this:

Kepler Discovers Multiple Planets Transiting a Single Star

August 26, 2010: NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star.

The transit signatures of two distinct Saturn-sized planets were seen in the data for a sun-like star designated "Kepler-9." The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.




An artist's concept of two Saturn-sized planets in the Kepler-9 planetary system


The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/26aug_kepler/

And this was NASA's Kepler press release for the day:


MEDIA ADVISORY : 10-73AR - Here


Can't find anything else regarding the 26th that seems above the above discovery...