Archive for the ‘ Jon Jenkins ’ Category
I went to bed the evening of May 13th exhausted from the long, intense campaign of commissioning the Kepler spacecraft. The long march started about a week after launch when we began to receive data from the photometer and needed to process it to verify that it was behaving as we expected and to prepare [ READ MORE ]
A question made by Ian Bradley arrived my e-mail via Stuart Atkinson, since there might be other Kepler fans with the same doubt I decided to bring it here: Regarding the Kepler 1st light image… The imaged area is well away from the ecliptic to allow 24/7 viewing of the image area without Sun [ READ MORE ]
Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech Here’s what you have been waiting for, NASA Kepler’s full field of view – an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra stretching across 100 square degrees, or the equivalent of two side-by-side dips of the Big Dipper. And now let us stay with Jon Jenkins, Kepler’s Co-Investigator[ READ MORE ]
Let the games begin! Starlight is falling on our detectors, so now hopefully it is only a matter of time before the remaining hurdles are jumped and the Kepler mission reports the first Earth-sized planets. This could prove an historic juncture for our sense of our place in the Universe. There will need to be [ READ MORE ]
Time zones always provide us with curious situations…I’ve e-mailed Jon Jenkins yesterday, just before going off to my own safe mode over the pillows and under the sheets, so I have just read the answer after seing our own star shining above the hills… Jon’s first words left me thinking that we would have to [ READ MORE ]
The stray light inside the telescope was sunlight scattered through baffles at two gaps around the dust cover where the pins holding the dust cover to the sunshade are located. The stray light illuminated an “arc” around the edge of the dust cover opposite the entry points. (Interestingly enough, there are some dust particles on [ READ MORE ]
We’ve all been here walking from one side of the room to the other, eagerly waiting for that special moment, the moment when Kepler peels of its sleep mask and awakes up, beholding the stars ahead, capturing its first light. Well…it looks like Kepler is already slightly opening its dreamy eyes to the Milky Way! [ READ MORE ]
As I write these words Kepler has still its sleep mask on and has been, in the last days, dreaming with the future view, with the wonders waiting in the distance, in some sort of REM as calibration tests take place. A good timing to publish the answers provided by Jon Jenkins, Kepler Co-Investigator to [ READ MORE ]
As we are counting the days for the first light detected by Kepler, what, as indicated, will happen within 10 days, some questions are popping out from the minds of those following the mission, me included. One of those questions has already been answered by Alan Gould in a previous post but I have decided [ READ MORE ]
The Beyond the Cradle adventure has barely left the launch pad but the great news keep on arriving to the mission control… If you have followed the Kepler related posts in the past days you know already one of the mission’s Co-Investigator, Jon Jenkins, who, through his words, was able to transmit us all the [ READ MORE ]
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