Which Planets Are Rocky?

Friday, 13 February 2015: 8:30 AM-11:30 AM
Room 220B (San Jose Convention Center)
Geoffrey Marcy, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Among the hundreds of near-Earth-size planets found by the NASA Kepler mission (some in the habitable zone), which of them are rocky like the Earth, and which are mini-Neptunes with thick layers of gas and water? The Kepler Project is making Doppler and transit-timing measurements to determine the masses and densities of some of these planets, to assess their structure.