NASA: new Kepler discovery, webcast 11am PST, followed by SETI webcast at 3pm PST

[bananas]

http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/join-us-two-exciting-kepler-events-thursday-april-17-11am-pst-and-3pm-pst

Join us for Two Exciting Kepler Events - Thursday April 17, at 11AM PST and 3PM PST
April 15, 2014



@3:00 PM PST, Join SETI Institute for an interview with Elisa Quintana

Streamed live on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/events/c28n72o49oio93890f7t6sre53k

We are excited to interview SETI Institute research scientist Elisa Quintana following a NASA press conference discussing her recent work. Tom Barclay, research scientist at Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and Jason Rowe, research scientist at SETI Institute, will also join the conversion hosted by special guest Jill Tarter.

@11:00 AM PST, NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discovery

NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

The journal Science has embargoed the findings until the time of the news conference.

The briefing participants are:

-- Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington

-- Elisa Quintana, research scientist, SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

-- Tom Barclay, research scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames

-- Victoria Meadows, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle, and principal investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, a team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since detected planets and planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances, including those in the habitable zone. These findings have led to a better understanding of our place in the galaxy.

The public is invited to listen to the teleconference live on UStream at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Audio of the teleconference also will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

Questions can be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

A link to relevant graphics will be posted at the start of the teleconference on NASA's Kepler site:http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

[Orrex]

1. Very cool!

Wish I could watch live. Remember the cube-rats!

[bananas]

2. there should be people live tweeting

https://twitter.com/search?q=kepler&src=typd&f=realtime

[longship]

3. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!

Bookmarked for later.

And remember cube rats and those with low bandwidth. Thanks.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

4. Oh, this could be very exciting. I'm especially curious about SETI's role in this discovery is. nt

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

5. They have found an Earth size planet in a habitable zone 500 light years away.

Kepler 186f

[G_j]

6. listening now

facinating

[LongTomH]

7. This is already up on the Kepler website

NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Planet in "The Habitable Zone" of Another Star.

I would hope this leads to more funding for space telescopes that can analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets; but, I wouldn't get my hopes up.

Edited to add: The press conference video will probably be posted later on the NASA or NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channels.

[TeeYiYi]

8. Planets and orbits, to scale...

TYY ...k+r

[Rowdyboy]

9. When will the Republicans demand they name it for Reagan?

[sufrommich]

10. I hope they haven't discovered an alien cookbook.

That never ends well.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Wow.

It will be very interesting if & when they start to be able to pull some spectrographic information out of that light re: atmospheric composition.