Kepler Data Dump - And NASA Ignores it (Update)

Don't they have to release all of their data within a year? I don't see the big deal with the science team holding back some of their data for a little while so that they have a chance to study it more before releasing it. The public will get it all soon enough.

They are skirting the line here. They have enough storyline to get away with it (We're just double checking, etc) but since the data they are withholding is skewed, that's bad form. If it's public, it's public.

"wring every last drop of truth and credibility" is a funny way to say "wring every last drop of publicity". Since they already are the discoverers, their place in history is secured. But why should only their buddies get to train their telescopes on those candidate stars?

Shrug. In the long run it won't matter. It's just bad form.

We had this discussion over the LRO data and look, less than a year later we have Moon Zoo! This is to be expected. The PIs and their henchPGs and UGs get to cherry pick the data for some career making -or breaking- discoveries and then the carcase released for the rest of us to pick over. Who knows. There may be some pearl in the oysters.

Why would they need to keep information private?

Are they afraid everyone will aim their telescopes at the same spot and steal all the light?

There are several pressures that nudge a science team to embargo data. Mainly the fact their professional record of publication and grants awarded are the main measure of a scientists life work. The University will pay attention to your grants, but your department and your scientific peers pay attention to your publications. Since your name is made or broken by the quantity and quality of your publications there is a natural pressure to embargo your data until after publication.

There is little division of labor on spacecraft missions today. Scientists and engineers swap job descriptions quite often. While this is fun, and intellectually stimulating, the operations crunch while a spacecraft is operating usually means that the scientist is too busy being a spacecraft/instrument operator and has no time to do science. The scientist might, usually does, have to wait until the mission is over before they have time to sit down and start being a scientist.

Meanwhile there is a much larger pool of hungry scientists who do have time to be scientists and they might have large blocks of time on under-subscribed telescopes or even time during full moon, or engineering test blocks at a major observatory. It is not unheard of for a hungry new scientist to look at the simple things like pointing logs of major observatories in an attempt to back out the scientific program of another team in attempt to scoop discovery.

There is a conflict of interest between a public that wants to know and the way a scientist's work is metered. Really there's no way around this conflict and for short periods of time you might know something is up, but not know what it is.

I know of one good reason to withhold the data in this case.

The data is absolutely useless unless you know the spacecraft & photometer systems in excruciating detail.
Tiny fractions of a degree of variation in the temperature of the focal plane, photometer structure, electronics, etc. can skew the data.

Someone that does not know how the meta-data affects the science data cannot interpret it properly.

The scientists who DO know how to do this are too busy analyzing their own data to explain all of this to the other scientists who would like to look over their shoulders.

In addition, SOME of the explanation of how the system works would violate ITAR since the Kepler Photometer has one of the most advanced optical systems ever made.

The problem with releasing all data within a year is that confirming a transit candidate requires three transits. For earth-like planets around sun-like stars, that will take at least two years, and possibly more.

Yup, indeed, more, with some of the CCD noise issues that were found post-launch. It's not incredibly evil for the team to want to have first stab there.

However, more fanfare today from SMD would have been nice! There's some fascinating candidates in the data! Kepler could very well make some of the most important discoveries in planetary science in the next couple of years. Indeed, chances are that it's in the data right now, but will need to be confirmed. There's real hope here that schoolkids in a few years will be being taught about Earthlike planets in other solar systems on a day by day basis.

I don't care if they delay the data or not, there's bucketfuls coming in the next few years.

This Kepler spacecraft is a game changer. I believe they'll pick this baby up in 50 years and put it in a museum.

You know, arguably the best thing to come out of NASA in the past 10 years is Kepler. I remember watching this back in the last century when Kepler was first proposed as a Discovery Mission but not selected. Dr. Borucki is a true NASA gem.

NASA is so screwed up right now. With all the negativity swirling around why couldn't they promote the awesome things that people at NASA do?

Kepler is so exciting. This is the type of mission that can inspire and motivate 4-12; and where is NASA?

Thank you Keith for putting this out there.

VR
RS327

NASA is obviously trying to hide something by obfuscation through incompetent PR. They must have found irrefutable proof of extraterrestrial intelligence and its obvious connections to Roswell, the Philadelphia Experiment, the faked moon landings, and the Amityville Horror...not to mention the Knights Templar and the Nazca lines.

Ssshhhh...

I only see abstracts on all of these links no papers

Editor's note: Click on the abstract link and you will see a PDF link to the right.

Folks:

If you look at the list of "planet candidates" there are a lot with masses less the Jupiter. There are also many orbits longer than thirty days and a few longer than 83 days (the orbit of Mercury).

My guess is that "The 400" are smaller than 1/10 Jupiter diameter and/or further than the orbit of Mercury. In both cases that's where the data drops off. If you look at our solar system compared to these data there is a gaping hole on the small end of things. But of course that is where the data gets iffy.

It could simply be that NASA has found earth sized (or smaller) "planet candidates" in close orbits and is not only being sure the data is accurate but deciding how to "spin" the story. If there are lots of small rocky planets out there, even if the ones they found aren't in the "life zone", it will imply that it's only a matter of time before we find an "Earth equivalent". That's still a big story.

tinker

I agree with those who say that it's public data, so make it publicly available, the sooner the better.

However, I can see one reasonable possibility when I try to look at it from the PI's side.

Imagine the situation where the data is released before its discoverers have had an opportunity to properly assess what they've found in detail; they are still very busy, after all. Meanwhile 15-year-old Johnny Whizkid from Hootersville, South Nowhere goes to his local newspaper or radio station with something fascinating that he's "discovered" from the data.

We all know that the media people are not scientists and don't understand even some very basic astronomy concepts. And, truth be told, there are a scary number of people in some of the space advocacy groups who are not much better. So, before you know it, Johnny's "scoop" is in the national media. The fact that his scoop is nonsense doesn't enter into this chain of events at all. (If you're not buying this, remember the recent stories about how the Apophis asteroid is going to hit the Earth.)

The first thing that the Principal Investigator (or any of his/her minions) knows is when a reporter sticks a mic/camera in his/her face in the parking lot and asks about little Johnny's discovery. The PI, of course, knows nothing about it and therefore has to decline giving any sort of comment, except perhaps "I don't know anything about this" or "this is news to me." Within 6 to 7 minutes, people (know-nots) will start accusing "cover-up!" which also makes the evening news (and 14,722 blog sites).

The scientist has done nothing wrong, but is suddenly a villain in the public's eye. I just made this up, of course, but I can imagine it happening (similar catch 22 media events have happened time and again), and I can easily imagine that PI's and their teams habitually do whatever is (legally) within their power to avoid getting caught in this kind of situation. In their shoes I would do the same.

Just something the think about.

Steve

It takes a lot of work with ground-based telescopes to check each candidate planet and make sure it's not a false positive (impostor). The most common impostors are binary-star pairs in the distant background. The observations needed to rule these out take time, and the only time that can be done from the ground is April-September, because that's when the Cygnus constellation is in the night sky. Last year, the spacecraft went up in the middle of that period, so most of an observing season was wasted. Well, we've just begun another one, and I am sure they're busy now.

Releasing the data now would mean other researchers who DIDN'T devote two decades to building Kepler could be competing for the same telescope time, and could get first publication on some really juicy things. If you ever want anyone to commit half their career to preparing a mission ever again, it has to be worth something now to be a member of the Kepler team. What it's worth is that they have time to get data for a really beautiful paper as their legacy.

So relax everybody. I'm not on the Kepler team, but I assure you nobody is trying to keep a secret. They really really want to get this data out, but only when it's well understood. All will be revealed. Human civilization has waited 5000 years for this; surely you can wait another 8 months?