NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.
To read more about this discovery go to https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html
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I have a question about Kepler’s capability to detect habitable exoplanets around stars with high stellar mass. If I am correct, the period of an exoplanet in an orbit comparable to Earth’s around a higher mass star scales approximately as P=k M^5/2. So for a star of two solars masses, the period of an habitable exoplanet would be about 5.7 years. Kepler’s mission life would not permit the observation of three transits. Is Kepler unable to detect habitable exoplanets around high mass stars?
Can Kepler detect habitable exoplanets around stars with higher stellar mass given it’s mission lifetime? I figure the orbital period scales to stellar mass as about P=k M^5/2. So an exoplanet around a star of two solar masses, in the equivalent position to Earth in the habitable zone, would have an orbital period of about 5.7 years, too long for Kepler to detect 3 transits!