Kepler First Light! April 16, 2009Posted by CosmicThespian in
News, Space Missions. Last week, the Kepler space telescope
released its dust cover. Today, a NASA press release announces
that Kepler has taken its first images of the star field within
which it will search for transiting exoplanets! The image below
illustrates where in the sky Kepler will spend the next three
and a half years looking for these distant worlds. The patch of
sky straddles the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra,
constellations which are visible high overhead in late summer
evenings from the Northern Hemisphere. This patch of sky covers
about 100 square degrees, which is about the equivalent of
looking at your outstretched hand held at arms length. The
images released to the public by the Kepler team consist of two
images which cover this entire region plus three more images
which “zoom in” on areas within this field of view. The above
image subtends a tiny portion of Kepler’s field of view – only
one-thousandth the size of the total s