Characteristics of planetary candidates observed by Kepler, II: Analysis of the first four months of data

Understand

On 1 February 2011 the Kepler Mission released data for 156,453 stars observed from the beginning of the science observations on 2 May through 16 September 2009.

• There are 1235 planetary candidates with transit like signatures detected in this period.
• These are associated with 997 host stars.
• Distributions of the characteristics of the planetary candidates are separated into five class-sizes; 68 candidates of approximately Earth-size (radius < 1.25 Earth radii), 288 super-Earth size (1.25 Earth radii < radius < 2 Earth radii), 662 Neptune-size (2 Earth radii < radius < 6 Earth radii), 165 Jupiter-size (6 Earth radii < radius < 15 Earth radii), and 19 up to twice the size of Jupiter (15 Earth radii < radius < 22 Earth radii).