re: #5 Naso Tang

Certainly the Kepler results will show that most main sequence stars have “things” orbiting them.

I think though that the enterprise doesn’t depend so much on how long it continues, since the proof has already been demonstrated and we are not going there anytime soon, but the picture will remain.

The extended missions are to increase the total amount of observations, which are needed to detect an Earth-size planet in an Earth-like orbit to a level where a 5-sigma confidence threshold is passed on the data.

I’m not so much “down” on the whole affair as much as cautious, as I know that our society as a whole doesn’t really know how to deal with all of this information, and the popular press reliably slaughters science stories. The detection of planets is really difficult, and if you read any of the papers/notes from the teams collecting, processing, and analyzing the data one is confronted with the enormity of the task.

Which is why it costs a lot of money.

Which our society doesn’t seem interested in doing any more.

The next step in observational astronomy really does require the JWST to, among many other things, try to get detailed spectra from the atmospheres of transiting planets. Also, a space-born observation platform to do radial velocity measurements, which isn’t in anybody’s plans yet, is needed to get the accuracy to measure the masses of planets the size of Earth or Venus around G class stars like our own sun. None of this is likely to be funded by any government soon.

Nevertheless, the planethunters website will certainly be an attraction for those who wish to delve into the data without struggling with all the gory details at MAST.