Kepler is a space telescope that searches Sun-like stars for planets. Its major goal is to determine {eta}_Earth, the fraction of Sunlike stars that have planets like Earth. When a planet transits or moves in front of a star, Kepler can measure the c
oncomitant dimming of the starlight. From analysis of the first four months of those measurements for over 150,000 stars, Keplers science team has determined sizes, surface temperatures, orbit sizes and periods for over a thousand new planet candidates. In this paper, we characterize the period probability distribution function of the super-Earth and Neptune planet candidates with periods up to 132 days, and find three distinct period regimes. For candidates with periods below 3 days the density increases sharply with increasing period; for periods between 3 and 30 days the density rises more gradually with increasing period, and for periods longer than 30 days, the density drops gradually with increasing period. We estimate that 1% to 3% of stars like the Sun are expected to have Earth analog planets, based on the Kepler data release of Feb 2011. This estimate of is based on extrapolation from a fiducial subsample of the Kepler planet candidates that we chose to be nominally complete (i.e., no missed detections) to the realm of the Earth-like planets, by means of simple power law models. The accuracy of the extrapolation will improve as more data from the Kepler mission is folded in. Accurate knowledge of {eta}_Earth is essential for the planning of future missions that will image and take spectra of Earthlike planets. Our result that Earths are relatively scarce means that a substantial effort will be needed to identify suitable target stars prior to these future missions.
Space astrometry is capable of sub-microarcsecond measurements of star positions. A hundred visits over several years could yield relative astrometric precision of ~0.1 uas, below the astrometric signature (0.3 uas) of a Sun-Earth system at a distanc
e of 10 parsecs. We investigate the impact of starspots on the detectability, via astrometric and radial velocity techniques, of Earthlike planets orbiting Sunlike stars. We find that for nearby stars, although starspot noise imposes severe restrictions on detectability by the radial velocity technique, it does not significantly affect astrometric detectability of habitable zone planets down to below an Earth mass.
