Kepler-6b

Kepler-6b is an extrasolar planet in the orbit of the unusually metal-rich Kepler-6, a star in the field of view of the NASA-operated Kepler spacecraft, which searches for planets that cross directly in front of, or transit, their host stars. It was the third planet to be discovered by Kepler. Kepler-6 orbits its host star every three days from a distance of .046 AU. Its proximity to Kepler-6 inflated the planet, about two-thirds the mass of Jupiter, to slightly larger than Jupiter's size and greatly heated its atmosphere.

Follow-up observations led to the planet's confirmation, which was announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 4, 2010 along with four other Kepler-discovered planets.

Discovery and naming

NASA's Kepler satellite trails the Earth and continually observes a portion of the sky between the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. It is devised to search for and discover planets that transit, or cross in front of, their host stars with respect to Earth by measuring small and generally periodic variations in a star's brightness. Kepler recognized a potential transit event around a star that was designated KOI-017, which was named Kepler-6 after the confirmation of Kepler-6b. The star was designated "6" because it was the sixth planet to be observed (but the third planet to be discovered) by the Kepler satellite.

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler (German: [ˈkɛplɐ]; December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

During his career, Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, Austria, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He was also a mathematics teacher in Linz, Austria, and an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope), and mentioned the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei.

Kepler (lunar crater)

Kepler (Latin Keplerus) is a lunar impact crater that lies between the Oceanus Procellarum to the west and Mare Insularum in the east. To the southeast is the crater Encke.

Kepler is most notable for the prominent ray system that covers the surrounding mare. The rays extend for well over 300 kilometers, overlapping the rays from other craters. Kepler has a small rampart of ejecta surrounding the exterior of its high rim. The outer wall is not quite circular, and possesses a slightly polygonal form. The interior walls of Kepler are slumped and slightly terraced, descending to an uneven floor and a minor central rise.

One of the rays from Tycho, when extended across the Oceanus Procellarum, intersects this crater. This was a factor in the choice of the crater's name when Giovanni Riccioli was creating his system of lunar nomenclature, as Kepler used the observations of Tycho Brahe while devising his three laws of planetary motion. On Riccioli's maps, this crater was named Keplerus, and the surrounding skirt of higher albedo terrain was named Insulara Ventorum.

Kepler (spacecraft)

Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. The spacecraft, named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, was launched on March 7, 2009.

Designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way to discover dozens of Earth-size exoplanets in or near the habitable zone and estimate how many of the billions of stars in the Milky Way have such planets,Kepler's sole instrument is a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. This data is transmitted to Earth, then analyzed to detect periodic dimming caused by exoplanets that cross in front of their host star.

Kepler is part of NASA's Discovery Program of relatively low-cost, focused primary science missions. The telescope's construction and initial operation were managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with Ball Aerospace responsible for developing the Kepler flight system. The Ames Research Center is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations since December 2009, and scientific data analysis. The initial planned lifetime was 3.5 years, but greater-than-expected noise in the data, from both the stars and the spacecraft, meant additional time was needed to fulfill all mission goals. Initially, in 2012, the mission was expected to be extended until 2016, but on July 14, 2012, one of the spacecraft's four reaction wheels used for pointing the spacecraft stopped turning, and completing the mission would only be possible if all other reaction wheels remained reliable. Then, on May 11, 2013, a second reaction wheel failed, disabling the collection of science data and threatening the continuation of the mission.