Kepler's Exoplanet Hunt On Hold Until 2011

"The Kepler space telescope was launched in March and the hope is that
in the small patch of sky (containing 100,000 stars) it is focussing in
on, Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting within the "habitable zones" of
their parent stars will be discovered. However, there's a problem:
Kepler has noisy amplifiers."

Space Disco : Discovery Space: Kepler's Exoplanet Hunt On Hold Until 2011
http://blogs.discovery.com/space_dis...ntil-2011.html

Dear Yousuf Khan:

On Oct 30, 10:33*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
"The Kepler space telescope was launched in March
and the hope is that in the small patch of sky
(containing 100,000 stars) it is focussing in on, Earth-
sized exoplanets orbiting within the "habitable zones" of
their parent stars will be discovered. However, there's a
problem: Kepler has noisy amplifiers."

I had a problem once, where I controlled the pitch of fan blades used
in a big scrubber system based on a 4-20mA signal. The controller
would not accept 4-20 mA directly, so I home rolled a converter (back
when there was no internet per se, and the electronics guys did not
know about hydraulics to bring them catalogs). You could key a walkie
talkie in the close vicinity of the converter, and watch the fan cause
a 30 foot high concrete wall to suck in and blow out... A military
grade op-amp swapout fixed it.

David A. Smith

In article ,
Yousuf Khan writes:
Space Disco : Discovery Space: Kepler's Exoplanet Hunt On Hold Until 2011
http://blogs.discovery.com/space_dis...ntil-2011.html

There is apparently an update amounting to "never mind." Given the
obvious inaccuracies in the blog, I'd be very skeptical anyway.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

On Nov 2, 1:02*pm, (Steve Willner) wrote:
There is apparently an update amounting to "never mind." *Given the
obvious inaccuracies in the blog, I'd be very skeptical anyway.

I don't know, the "never-mind" didn't seem all that convincing. They
just said that they will attempt to work around the sensors with the
overamplified amplifiers.

Yousuf Khan