NASA : NASA Kepler Results Usher in a New Era of Astronomy

Kepler Science Conference II

November 4-8, 2013

Hosted by the NASA Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field, CA

Co-sponsored by the Kepler Project and the
NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

11/4/13: If you'd like to participate in the online conversation, the Twitter hashtag is #Kepler2.

11/4/13: Check out this word cloud generated from the titles of the more than 250 abstracts submitted for the second Kepler science conference. 10/30/13: A new splinter session on "The Future of the Exoplanet Exploration" program has been added for Thursday at 12:45 pm. 10/29/13: The URL for live streaming during the conference is: http://connect.arc.nasa.gov/kepler and information has been added to the Local Information page on lunch options during the conference. Mirror site information is also available. 10/23/13 Announcement: The public lecture by Frank Drake, titled Kepler and Its Impact on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence will now take place on Tuesday evening at 7 pm in building 152. Tickets for this free event can be reserved here. 10/17/13 Update: With the re-opening of the US government and the lifting of furloughs, we are happy to announce that the Second Kepler Science Conference will go on as planned November 4-8 with an opening reception on Nov 3, at NASA Ames. 10/15/13 Update: At this time, the Second Kepler Science Conference continues as planned Nov. 4-8 at Ames Research Center. However, if the government shutdown continues beyond October 21, the conference will likely be delayed.
10/1/13 Update: At this time, the second Kepler Science Conference continues as planned Nov. 4-8 at Ames Research Center. Please check back for any change in status due to the government shutdown.

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Registration (includes Foreign National questionnaire)

Splinter Meetings - Kepler Data & Tools (Tuesday) and TESS Guest Investigator Session (Wednesday) and The Future of the Exoplanet Program (Thursday)

Remote Attendance and Mirror Sites

Agenda and Poster Session Information

Presenter Information

Hotel, Travel and Local Information

Important Dates

Participants

Organizing Committees

(click on the above links for more on each topic)

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This conference will highlight the full range of scientific results emerging from more than three years of Kepler observations, as well as what to expect from continued observations. Confirmed invited speakers include:

Rory Barnes Natalie Batalha Tim Bedding Jessie Christiansen Frank Drake Courtney Dressing Dan Fabrycky Steve Howell Daniel Huber Jennifer Johnson John Johnson Hans Kjeldsen

Heather Knutson Kaitlin Kratter Christoph Mordasini Franceso Pepe Erik Petigura George Ricker Avi Shporer Charlie Sobeck David Soderblom Rachel Street Diana Valencia

Topics to be covered include:

• Monday
  • Exoplanet Statistics, False Positives, and Completeness Corrections
  • Earth Analogues and Super-Earths

• Tuesday
  • Multiple Planets and Multiple Star Systems
  • Planet Formation and Migration Theories

• Wednesday
  • Habitable Zone
  • Characterizing Transiting Planets
  • Stellar Activity, Rotation, Ages, Metallicity

• Thursday
  • Eclipsing and Interacting Binaries
  • Future Exoplanet Telescopes and Instrumentation
  • Asteroseismology

• Friday
  • Asteroseismology
  • Galactic and Extragalactic Astrophysics

Agenda and Poster Session Information

The agenda and poster session listings is now available. Click here to view the agenda and here to view the poster sessions. Note that there will be two poster sessions during the conference.

Registration

There is no registration fee for this conference, however all attendees must register through the online registration site. On-line registration will close on Oct. 25 although foreign nationals must register by Sept. 20 (see below). On-site registration will be available for US citizens and legal residents as space allows, however for planning purposes, we ask that you please register ahead of time. Please note that NASA employees' attendance is governed by travel policy restrictions and any NASA attendee should consult the policy for compliance. Current restrictions limit the participation of federal employees and NASA contractors to no more than 50 outside attendees (i.e. from outside NASA Ames).

Note that since the conference will be held on a US government site, all foreign nationals must register by Sept. 20, 2013 to allow time for security clearance. Click here to register, making sure to use the foreign national tab to complete your registration. Note that part in addition to completing the foreign national registration, we ask that you email copies of your relevant travel documents (passport, ESTA application, visa, etc.).

Splinter Meetings

Three splinter meetings are scheduled during the conference, one each during lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, all will take place in Building 3 near Hanger 1, a ~10 min walk from Building 152 (in the upper right portion of this map). People who wish to attend can sign-up for these two splinters at the conference and also purchase a boxed lunch to take to the splinter meeting with you. Each will last for approximately 1 hour. Tuesday lunchtime splinter meeting: Kepler Data and Tools for Users - Building 3 at 12:30 pm We will discuss the many data products and tools available to Kepler users. There will also be time for users to suggest additional data products and tools that they would like to see included in the archives and Kepler Science Office. Specific areas to be discussed are:

• Current and legacy data products - Susan Thompson
• Kepler data tools - Martin Still
• MAST Archive - Scott Fleming
• NASA Exoplanet Archive - Rachel Akeson
• Community Follow-up Program (CFOP) - David Ciardi

Wednesday: TESS Guest Investigator Session - Building 3 at 1:00 pm As part of the Phase A concept study, the TESS team developed a Science Enhancement Option of a Guest Investigator (GI) program that would allows members of the astronomical community to propose observations for general astrophysics. The GI program is conceptually based upon the Kepler Guest Observer program, and the TESS team hopes to take advantage of lessons learned from the Kepler GO experience. This session will include only a short talk about the concept of the TESS GI program, and then will be open for general discussion about how to design and optimize this Science Enhancement Option. Thursday: The Future of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program - Building 3 at 12:45 pm Gary Blackwood of the Exoplanet Exploration Program Office (JPL) and Doug Hudgins of the Exoplanet Exploration Program (NASA HQ) will describe the current and upcoming missions and ground observations within the scope of the Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) and NASA Astrophysics to advance exoplanet science. Those include AFTA, LBTI, probe-scale missions for starshade and coronagraph, Kepler, TESS, and JWST. We will also describe the science community involvement and the technology investments we are making to enable these future missions. We will solicit feedback from the science community on the science priorities, mission possibilities, and science community engagement by the program.

If you would like to hold a splinter meeting during the conference, please send an email with your request (# of people, date, time) to Mark Messersmith. Space will also be available during the conference for impromptu splinter meetings on a first come, first served basis.

Remote Attendance and Mirror Sites

All talks will be streamed live and archived for later viewing. You may tune into the live presentations using Adobe Connect and ask questions via the chat function. Selected questions will be read out loud at the conference as time allows. Adobe Flash Player is required to use Adobe Connect. If you do not have flash player installed on your system, download it here. The URL for the live stream is

http://connect.arc.nasa.gov/kepler.

You can also test your computer's connection to Ames using this link: https://connect.arc.nasa.gov/keplertest?guestName=Kepler, If you encounter any problems connecting, please contact Marco Boldt for help. Mirror sites will be available at the following NASA Astrobiology Institute nodes:

• Penn State NAI node (point of contact: Chris House)
• University of Washington/VPL NAI Node (point of contact: Vikki Meadows)
• NAI Hawaii Team (point of contact: Karen Meech)
• NAI Goddard Space Flight Center Team

Announcements

There will be an opening reception at NASA Ames on Sunday evening, Nov. 3 from 5-7 pm. Registration materials will be available for pickup at this time.

The final program will be published on September 30; scroll up on this page to see the general topics that will be covered each day.

Email us at keplerII@ipac.caltech.edu to be added to our e-mail list for conference announcements.

Speaker Information and Abstract Submission

Click here to submit an abstract and for presentation information.

All abstracts will be reviewed by the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC); all abstracts may not be accepted for presentation at the conference.

Hotel, Travel, and Local Information

Click here for information on the conference venue, accommodations, and travel. Check back for updates.

Important Dates

• August 1, 2013: Meeting registration and abstract submission open
• September 6, 2013: Abstract Submission Deadline
• September 20, 2013: Foreign National Registration Closed
• September 30, 2013: Final Program Published Online and Talk/Poster Decision Date
• October 3, 2013: Deadline for reserving rooms if you wish to stay at the NASA Exchange Lodge
• October 25, 2013: On-line Registration Closed for US Citizens
• November 4-8, 2013: Conference at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA

Participant List

Organizing Committees

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Questions: KeplerII@ipac.caltech.edu
(last updated October 21, 2013) Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui ayabaca@gmail.com ayabaca@hotmail.com ayabaca@yahoo.com


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Astronomy: First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.

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Starry Starry Skies (Artist's Concept)

Astronomers have discovered two gas giant planets orbiting stars in the Beehive cluster, a collection of about 1,000 tightly packed stars. The planets are the first ever found around sun-like stars in a cluster of stars. Such planets, even though they are not habitable, would have skies filled with many bright stars as illustrated in this artist's concept. A gas giant planet is shown to the right of its sun-like star, and all around, the stars of the Beehive cluster shine brightly in the dark.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster

 

 

WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.

The starry-skied planets are two so-called hot Jupiters, which are massive, gaseous orbs that are boiling hot because they orbit tightly around their parent stars. Each hot Jupiter circles a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, also called the Praesepe, a collection of roughly 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

The Beehive is an open cluster, or a grouping of stars born at about the same time and out of the same giant cloud of material. As such, the stars share a similar chemical composition. Unlike the majority of stars, which spread out shortly after birth, these young stars remain loosely bound together by mutual gravitational attraction.

"We are detecting more and more planets that can thrive in diverse and extreme environments like these nearby clusters," said Mario R. Perez, the NASA astrophysics program scientist in the Origins of Solar Systems Program. "Our galaxy contains more than 1,000 of these open clusters, which potentially can present the physical conditions for harboring many more of these giant planets."

The two new Beehive planets are called Pr0201b and Pr0211b. The star's name followed by a "b" is the standard naming convention for planets.

"These are the first 'b's' in the Beehive," said Sam Quinn, a graduate student in astronomy at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the lead author of the paper describing the results, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Quinn and his team, in collaboration with David Latham at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, discovered the planets by using the 1.5-meter Tillinghast telescope at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona to measure the slight gravitational wobble the orbiting planets induce upon their host stars. Previous searches of clusters had turned up two planets around massive stars but none had been found around stars like our sun until now.

"This has been a big puzzle for planet hunters," Quinn said. "We know that most stars form in clustered environments like the Orion nebula, so unless this dense environment inhibits planet formation, at least some sun-like stars in open clusters should have planets. Now, we finally know they are indeed there."

The results also are of interest to theorists who are trying to understand how hot Jupiters wind up so close to their stars. Most theories contend these blistering worlds start out much cooler and farther from their stars before migrating inward.

"The relatively young age of the Beehive cluster makes these planets among the youngest known," said Russel White, the principal investigator on the NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant that funded this study. "And that's important because it sets a constraint on how quickly giant planets migrate inward. And knowing how quickly they migrate is the first step to figuring out how they migrate."

The research team suspects planets were turned up in the Beehive cluster because it is rich in metals. Stars in the Beehive have more heavy elements such as iron than the sun has.

According to White, "Searches for planets around nearby stars suggest that these metals act like a 'planet fertilizer,' leading to an abundant crop of gas-giant planets. Our results suggest this may be true in clusters as well."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program office. More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is available at:

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov

 NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

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