Kepler Mission – Errare Humanum Est
I’ve been reflecting on the events surrounding the TED lecture by my colleague, Dimitar Sasselov. There is disappointment in the air. People who were misled to believe that Kepler had found many other earths out there now realize that this isn’t the case. I understand how they must feel. I admit that I feel a little bit disappointed too, though not for the same reason. I and my colleagues have worked hard to understand our data and to plan out the analysis in a systematic and methodical way. We are excited by the small, but steady stream of discoveries that we are making. And we have full confidence that one day we will learn something profound about habitable, earth-size planets in our galaxy. I felt a bit derailed and stunned by the announcement of 140 “earth-like” planets by my colleague. I admit that I, like many out there, understood it to mean “earth-size” and “habitable”. And even though I now understand that this isn’t what he meant, I admit that I still feel a bit disappointed.
We had our “first light” already with some sunlight making it in around the dust cover, but found a different attitude at which almost no light entered the telescope so that we could get a good dark frame for comparison with preflight test, and that can be used to formulate some of our calibration products. In retrospect, it’s nice to see that all 42 science CCDs and 4 Fine Guidance Sensor CCDs are responding to light as well as behaving as expected in dark frames.
