UF Astronomy Professor, quoted in National Geographic

Astronomy Professor Eric Ford was quoted in National Geographic, last February 24th.

You can read it following this link: http://goo.gl/LNhj7

Reflections on Kepler's 3rd birthday



Artist's rendition of Kepler spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel

Three years ago, I witnessed the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. As the first space mission designed from the ground-up to study exoplanets, it was a major juncture in the search for other worlds and all of astronomy. Yet, the launch was really one more opportunity to practice patience. As a part of the Kepler Science Team, I waited to learn of the spacecraft's health, then the pointing and focus, then the data quality, then enough data to begin to do science, then the first planet candidates, then the progress of our colleagues in improved data analysis techniques. Now, we wait for Kepler to observe long enough to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of solar-like stars.

As a member of the transiting timing variations working group, I'm also anxiously waiting for enough data to measure the masses of small planets, so we can map the transition between "super-Earth's" and "mini-Neptunes". These new classes of planets for which there is no analog in our solar system are actually quite common for other stars. Why doesn't our own solar system have any super-Earths (or mini-Neptunes)? How did Earth resist Icarus's urge to fly too close too the Sun for life, like most of the thousands of planets being discovered by Kepler? Is there something special about our solar system? Continued observations and analysis of the Kepler data provide best chance to address questions like these.

At the launch, several mission's founders were already a tight nit team. Over the last three years, I and my small research group at UF have become part of the Kepler family. I can't guess how many emails, telecons, heated debates we've had. Those have pushed us to work many late nights to search for planets, to vet planet candidates, to optimize the next quarter's target list, to provide some analysis in time for another team member's paper, to explain why NASA should keep the mission alive beyond 2012, and to convey results and the sense of wonder to the public. It's been an exhausting, but exhilarating ride. I hope we can hang on for a few more years.

Prof. Ford during the Kepler launch, 2009. Credit: NASA/Kepler Mission.

Kepler has opened our eyes to the power of time-domain astronomy, providing nearly-continuous, long-term and ultra-high precision photometry. The only analogy I can offer is to how much we learned about the universe when previous NASA missions made it possible to see the sky in wavelengths previously inaccessible due to Earth's atmosphere hanging over telescopes on the ground. Far above Earth's atmosphere, Kepler's data quality is so much better than anything before it that most astronomers are just beginning to appreciate the possibilities for studying planets and stars in ways never before possible. Kepler has already returned a treasure trove of data, one that will be mined by astronomers for many years if not decades into the future.

Kepler was always intended to be a stepping stone towards future missions that could study the atmospheres and surfaces of potentially Earth-like planets. I hope that humans will muster another great observatory optimized for exoplanet science, so we can realize those goals during my career, or at least my lifetime. If not, at least we have the Kepler Mission.

Professor Eric B. Ford.

Kepler Mission facebook page

Call for applications for IScAI 2012

IScAI Students visit the Gran Telescopio Canarias
 (Photo: Consolider-GTC)

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and partner institutions announce the 2012 edition of the International School for Advanced Instrumentation or IScAI, an international collaboration between universities, research centers and technologic companies with the goal of offering astronomers, physicists and engineers specialised formation in all areas related with the designs and building of cutting-edge scientific instrumentation.

The programme consists of five weeks of intensive course work on five different subjects related to the design and construction of astronomical instrumentation. Each one imparted by top professors on its field: in optics, Steve Eikenberry from University of Florida; in mechanics, Manuel Maldonado (FRACTAL S.L.N.E); in software, Nicolas Carfiel (Universidad Complutense de Madrid); in electronics, Enrique Joven (IAC); and in management Marisa García Vargas (FRACTAL S.L.N.E).

After the theoretical lessons, students can opt to a hands-on period in institutions or companies related to the school, working in world-class instrumentation programs.

These will be held at the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in La Laguna, on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands. The IScAI will start in May 2012 and is open to astronomers, physicists and engineers worldwide. The deadline for applications is March 1, 2012.

IScAI founding institutions are Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain), University of Florida (USA), Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica de México (Mexico) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico). Other institutions have joined like Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, and Centro de Astrobiología (Spain). Also the companies EADS Astrium Crisa, Fractal SLNE, GMV, IDOM, LIDAX, y NTE-Sener.

The IScAI 2012 is funded by the grant "First Science with the GTC", under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

For more information about the IScAI and the registration procedure, please check the school’s web site at: http://iscai.iac.es

UF astronomers contribute to NASA’s planet discoveries

Published on University of Florida News on Thursday, January 26, 2012.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — NASA announced today the discovery of 11 new “solar systems” hosting at least 26 planets found with data from NASA’s Kepler Mission.

Kepler's Planetary Systems, Jan. 2012 Multiple planet systems discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. Newly found planets are shown here in green. The eight planets of the solar system are shown in blue. Credit: NASA Ames/Jason Steffen, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics

The discovery nearly doubles the number of verified Kepler planets so far. It also triples the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits – or passes in front of — its host star. Such systems are particularly valuable for the clues they provide about how planets form.

Eric B. Ford, associate professor of the astronomy department at the University of Florida, is part of the Kepler Mission science team. Ford’s research group at UF, including graduate student Robert Morehead and postdoctoral associate Althea Moorhead, has contributed to several previous Kepler discoveries. Ford is lead author of the paper describing Kepler-23 and Kepler-24, two of the 11 systems announced today.

In this research, Ford and his team not only describe the two new planetary systems but also develop a new technique that, in Ford’s words “dramatically accelerates planet discovery and will enable astronomers to confirm planets transiting fainter and more distant stars.”

The Kepler Mission uses a 1-meter space telescope to stare constantly at a patch of the Milky Way, registering the small decreases in the light from stars caused when a planet crosses in front of it. With this tool, astronomers are able to constantly monitor more than 160,000 stars at a time.

Until now, confirming that small decreases in a star’s brightness was caused by a planet required additional observations and time-consuming analysis. The new technique takes advantage of the gravitational effects that different planets in a system have on each other’s orbits. By precisely timing the deviations from the expected orbital times caused by this effect, the team was able to detect the gravitational tug exerted by the planets on each other, and confirm 10 of the newly announced planetary systems.

Five of the new planetary systems contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Another five systems contain a pair of planets where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.

“These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets, similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher,” said Jason Steffen, the Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at Fermilab Center for Astroparticle Physics and lead author of a paper confirming four of the systems.

The new planets orbit close to their host stars, their size ranging from 1.7 times the radius of Earth to about the size of Jupiter. Fifteen of them are smaller than Neptune and further observations will be required to determine which of them are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The confirmed planets orbit their host star once every 6 to 143 days, so all of them are closer to their host star than Venus is to the sun.

The new discoveries will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Searching for exoplanets using real Kepler data is open to everyone by visiting planethunters.org. For more information about the Kepler mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

NASA‘s Kepler mission and UF astronomer find two new planets orbiting double suns

Published on UF News, January 11th 2012.

Using data from NASA’s Kepler mission, a team that includes a University of Florida astronomer has discovered two new planets orbiting double star systems, something that had never been seen until last September.

The newly confirmed planets, called Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, will be announced in Wednesday’s online edition of the journal Nature, said Eric B. Ford, UF associate professor of astronomy. William F. Welsh, associate professor at San Diego State University, is the lead author on the paper.

An artist's rendition of the Kepler-35 planetary system, in which a Saturn-size planet orbits a pair of stars.
Image credit: Lynette Cook / extrasolar.spaceart.org

Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b both orbit a “binary star.” They are actually a pair of gravitationally bound stars that orbit each other. While the existence of such bodies, called “circumbinary planets,” had long been predicted, they remained just a theory until the team discovered Kepler-16b in September 2011. They dubbed Kepler-16b “Tatooine” because of its resemblance to the two-sun world depicted in the “Star Wars” film series.

“We have long believed these kinds of planets to be possible, but they have been very difficult to detect for various technical reasons,” Ford said. “With the discoveries of Kepler-16b, 34b and 35b, the Kepler mission has shown that the galaxy abounds with millions of planets orbiting two stars.”

The planets were discovered by measuring the star light decrease as the planets pass in front of, or transit, either of the two stars. Kepler also measures the star light decrease when one of the stars passes in front of the other. The mutual gravitational tugs of the stars and planets cause the times of the transits to deviate from a regular schedule, allowing astronomers to confirm the planet and measure its mass.

Both planets are low-density gas giants, comparable in size to Jupiter, but much less massive. Compared to Jupiter, Kepler-34 is about 24 percent smaller in size, but has 78 percent less mass. It can complete a full orbit in 288 terrestrial days. Kepler-35 is about 26 percent smaller, has 88 percent less mass, and completes its orbit around the stars much faster – just 131 days.

The astronomers believe the planets are made primarily of hydrogen and too hot to sustain life.

“Circumbinary planets can have much more complex climates, since the distance between the planet and each star change significantly during each orbital period, the length of an alien planet’s year,” Ford said. “For Kepler-35b, the amount of incoming star light changes by over 50 percent within a single Earth year. For Kepler-34b, each Earth-year brings ‘summers’ with 2.3 times as much star light as winters. Over the course of a year, the change in the amount of sunlight heating the Earth varies by only 6 percent.”

NASA’s Kepler mission, which began in March 2009, uses a 1-meter space telescope trained on one small portion of the Milky Way for several years. Astronomers analyze data from the telescope for periodic dimming that indicates a planet crossing in front of its host star. The mission’s goal is to find the frequency of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of their host stars – where a planet might have liquid water on its surface.

Most Sun-like stars in the galaxy are not alone, like the Earth’s sun, but have a “dance partner,” forming a binary system or binary star. Kepler has already identified about 2,165 eclipsing binaries, of the more than 160,000 stars being observed.

NASA originally planned to stop receiving data from the Kepler spacecraft in November 2012.

“Astronomers are practically begging NASA to extend the Kepler mission until 2016, so it can characterize the masses and orbits of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone. Kepler is revolutionizing so many fields, not just planetary science,” Ford said. “It would be a shame not to maximize the scientific return of this great observatory. Hopefully common sense will prevail and the mission will continue.”

The public can contribute to searching for planets using real Kepler data by visiting planethunters.org, which works with the latest versión of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. For additional information, downloadable slides, and full resolution versions of artwork after the embargo lifts, please see http://sdsu.edu/kepler. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

Follow this link to see the original UF press release.