Toward a Reliable Value for eta-Earth

Friday, 13 February 2015: 8:30 AM-11:30 AM
Room 220B (San Jose Convention Center)
Natalie Batalha, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
The frequency of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of their host stars (eta-Earth) is of great interest; both to our understanding of the structure of planetary systems and of the prevalence of such planets, but also to the development of future missions that will be developed to detect and characterize the composition of their atmospheres. Because of the many biases inherent in the surveys, substantial corrections must be made to the sample distribution to get a reliable estimate of the parent distribution. These factors will be discussed as well as preliminary estimates of eta-Earth.