NASA Ames Academy intern, William Rapin, worked with Kepler PI, William Borucki, to create this poster that was displayed at the Summer 2011 Higher Education Poster Symposium at NASA Ames Research Center, August 9, 2011.
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Abstract : The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 and is now monitoring permanently 150,000 stars in a fixed field of view. In February 2011, a list of 1235 planetary candidates was published for these stars, all of various types. Most of them are pending validation, waiting for further analysis or observations to be done. Only 16 have been confirmed as planets. Among this increasing number of planetary candidates are more than 60 candidates within the habitable zone. Knowledge of characteristics of the stars and candidate planets enables the Science Team to generate a first set of planet characteristics. To confirm these candidates it is first needed to rank them. Only the most interesting KOI (Kepler Object of Interest) will be investigated this summer. The Kepler Team can uses a variety of measurements to ultimately confirm and characterize a planet. I will keep a track and merge this diverse information to develop a comprehensive data set of characteristics of the very first extrasolar planets within habitable zone ever discovered.
See also: photo on Facebook page.

Credit: William Rapin and William Borucki