TRIBUNNEWS.COM, JAKARTA - NASA akhirnya mengumumkan penemuan planet Kepler-10b, yang disebut exoplanet karena memiliki orbit bintang ketimbang matahari, Rabu (2/2/2011).
Penemuan planet alien atau ekstra surya terbaru hasil misi pesawat antariksa Kepler, dilakukan di Auditorium Markas NASA di Washington dan disiarkan di Televisi NASA.
Pengumuman dilakukan dalam sebuah briefing pada pukul 13.00 waktu setempat atau sekitar 3 Februari pukul 01.00 WIB. Briefing tersebut hanya membahas temuan planet ekstra surya terbaru.
Pengumuman resmi di situs NASA mengungkapkan, "Data yang di-release akan memperbarui jumlah kandidat planet. Data berdasarkan observasi yang dilakukan antara tanggal 2 Mei - 17 Sepetember 2009." Pertemuan akan mengikuti jadwal yang telah dirilis hari ini.
Hadir dalam pertemuan itu, pihak yang terkait misi Kepler. Diantaranya Douglas Hudgins dari Kepler Program Sceintist NASA, William Borucki dan Jack Lissauer yang menjadi investigator misi Kepler di Ames Research Center NASA serta Debra Fischer, professor astronomi dari Yale University.
Seperti yang dikutip Tribunnews sebelumnya dari CNN, Selasa (11/1/2011), sebuah pesawat ulang-alik NASA berhasil mendeteksi sebuah planet berbatu-batu dan merupakan planet terkecil yang pernah ditemukan di luar sistem tata surya.
Planet yang disebut exoplanet, karena memiliki orbit bintang ketimbang matahari, disebut Kepler-10b. Memiliki ukuran 1,4 ukuran diameter bumi dan berhasil dikonformasi setelah data dikumpulkan selama delapan bulan. Planet bebatuan yang mirip bumi pertama kali ditemukan oleh Kepler.
"Seluruh kemampuan Kepler berhasil dikonvergensi menjadi sebuah bukti yang solida dari planet berbatu yang menggunakan orbit bintang ketimbang mengorbit di sistem tata surya," demikian dikatakan Natalie Batalha, kepala sains dari dari misi NASA.
"Tim Kepler membuat komitmen di tahun 2010 mengenai penemuan tanda-tanda planet kecil dan kini sudah mulai terlihat," katanya.
Ukuran Kepler 10b dan juga komposisi berbatu lebih mirip bintang ketimbang planet bergas yang memiliki air dan sangat jauh dari bentuk bintang. Demikian keterangan disampaikan NASA. Meski demikian, NASA mengatakan jika model planet ini sangat kecil untuk disebut bintang karena ukurannya 20 kali lebih kecil ketimbang Mercury. Bintang Kepler -10b memiliki jarak 560 tahun perjalanan cahaya ke bumi. (*)
Judul sama isinya gak nyambung, gak ada tulisan yang menyatakan keberadaan Alien. Ini saya kutipkan berita aslinya dari Websitenya Nasa :
Quote:
NASA'S Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
› Download Larger NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
The discovery of this so-called exoplanet is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010.
"All of Kepler's best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler's deputy science team lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and primary author of a paper on the discovery accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. "The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it's beginning to pay off."
Kepler's ultra-precise photometer measures the tiny decrease in a star's brightness that occurs when a planet crosses in front of it. The size of the planet can be derived from these periodic dips in brightness. The distance between the planet and the star is calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star.
Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. However, since it orbits once every 0.84 days, Kepler-10b is more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun and not in the habitable zone.
Kepler-10 was the first star identified that could potentially harbor a small transiting planet, placing it at the top of the list for ground-based observations with the W.M. Keck Observatory 10-meter telescope in Hawaii.
Scientists waiting for a signal to confirm Kepler-10b as a planet were not disappointed. Keck was able to measure tiny changes in the star's spectrum, called Doppler shifts, caused by the telltale tug exerted by the orbiting planet on the star.
"The discovery of Kepler-10b, a bona fide rocky world, is a significant milestone in the search for planets similar to our own," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Although this planet is not in the habitable zone, the exciting find showcases the kinds of discoveries made possible by the mission and the promise of many more to come," he said.
"Our knowledge of the planet is only as good as the knowledge of the star it orbits," said Batalha. Because Kepler-10 is one of the brighter stars being targeted by Kepler, scientists were able to detect high frequency variations in the star's brightness generated by stellar oscillations, or starquakes. "This is the analysis that really allowed us to pin down Kepler-10b's properties.," she added.
"We have a clear signal in the data arising from light waves that travel within the interior of the star," said Hans Keldsen, an astronomer at the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium at Aarhus University in Denmark. Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium scientists use the information to better understand the star, just as earthquakes are used to learn about Earth's interior structure. "As a result of this analysis, Kepler-10 is one of the most well characterized planet-hosting stars in the universe next to our sun," Kjeldsen said.
That's good news for the team studying Kepler-10b. Accurate stellar properties yield accurate planet properties. In the case of Kepler-10b, the picture that emerges is of a rocky planet with a mass 4.6 times that of Earth and with an average density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter -- similar to that of an iron dumbbell.
"This planet is unequivocally rocky, with a surface you could stand on," commented team member Dimitar Sasselov, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge and a Kepler co-investigator.
"All of Kepler’s best capabilities have converged for this discovery," Batalha said, "yielding the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun."
Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.
Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.
kya yg di film V 'Visitor' kali yah.......................................ntar pd naksir lg,cakep2 ganteng2 soal nye tapiiiiiiiiiiii di balik nya.......huasemmmmmm serem gilaaaaa.....
ada, temen kost adek gw dulu namanya ah lien org bangka. kalo dipanggil yah itu ALIEN..
baju-nya juga ditandain ALIEN, takut ketuker ma anak kost lain hehehe
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2nd February 2011, 12:11 
NASA Umumkan Penemuan Planet Alien 
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