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HARPS-N Scientific Rationale
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The NASA Kepler mission is scheduled for launch February 2009. It will monitor a single field in Cygnus/Lyra (RA=19:23h, Dec=44.5d) and discover many hundreds of transiting planets orbiting preselected main sequence stars
(F to M type) of V= 11-15 mag. Kepler is capable of detecting more than
50 Earth-sized planets in all orbits, with about a dozen in orbits
approaching 1-year period; as well as several hundred Super-Earths
(~1.3 Earth radii) in all orbits up to 1 year. The Kepler mission had no
provisions for measuring their masses (in its follow-up effort), because
the expected Doppler amplitudes are less than 1 meter per second.
HARPS-N will make that possible, and to our knowledge is unique in
that capability.
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