Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:29:04.225Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Kepler Mission and Eclipsing Binaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2007

David Koch
Affiliation:
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
William Borucki
Affiliation:
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
Gibor Basri
Affiliation:
University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Timothy Brown
Affiliation:
Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Golenta, CA, USA
Douglas Caldwell
Affiliation:
SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA
Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Denmark
William Cochran
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Edna DeVore
Affiliation:
SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA
Edward Dunham
Affiliation:
Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, AZ, USA
Thomas N. Gautier
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA
John Geary
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
Ronald Gilliland
Affiliation:
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA
Alan Gould
Affiliation:
Lawrence Hall of Science, UC-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Jon Jenkins
Affiliation:
SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA
Yoji Kondo
Affiliation:
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
David Latham
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jack Lissauer
Affiliation:
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
David Monet
Affiliation:
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Kepler Mission is a space-based photometric mission with a differential photometric precision of 14 ppm (at V = 12 for a 6.5 hour transit). It is designed to continuously observe a single field of view (FOV) of greater then 100 square degrees in the Cygnus-Lyra region for four or more years. The primary goal of the mission is to monitor more than one-hundred thousand stars for transits of Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. In the process, many eclipsing binaries (EB) will also be detected and light curves produced. To enhance and optimize the mission results, the stellar characteristics for all the stars in the Kepler FOV with V < 16 will have been determined prior to launch. As part of the verification process, stars with transit candidates will have radial-velocity follow-up observations performed to determine the component masses and thereby separate eclipses caused by stellar companions from transits caused by planets. The result will be a rich database on EBs. The community will have access to the archive for further analysis, such as, for EB modeling of the high-precision light curves. A guest observer program is also planned to allow for photometric observations of objects not on the target list but within the FOV.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2007

References

Abazajian, Kevork et al. 2003, ApJ, The First Data Release Of The Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 126, 20812086 Google Scholar
Borucki, W. J. & Summers, A.L. 1984, Icarus 58, 121 Google Scholar
Borucki, W. J., Koch, D., Basri, G., Brown, T., Caldwell, D., DeVore, E., Dunham, E., Gautier, T., Geary, J., Gilliland, R., Gould, A., Howell, S., Jenkins, J., & Latham, D. Kepler Mission: Design, Expected Science Results, Opportunities to Participate, 2005, in A Decade of Extrasolar Planets around Normal Stars (ed. Livio, M.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in preparationGoogle Scholar
Brown, Timothy M. & Gilliland, Ronald L. Asterioseismology, 1994, ARAA, 32, 3782 Google Scholar
Castelli, F. & Kurucz, R.L. 2003, New grids of ATLAS9 model atmospheres, in IAU Symposium 210, Modelling of Stellar Atmospheres, (eds. Piskunov, N.E., Weiss, W.W. and Gray, D.F.) 2003.Google Scholar
Guinan, E. F., Engle, S. G., & Devinney, E. 2007, in Solar and Stellar Physics through Eclipses (eds. Demircan, O., Selam, S. O. and Albayrak, B.), ASP Conf. Series, in pressGoogle Scholar
Latham, D. 1992, in IAU Coll. ASPCS, McAlister, & Hartkopf, (eds.), 32:135, 110 Google Scholar
Kasting, J.F., Whitmire, D.P., & Reynolds, R.T. 1993, Icarus 101, 108 Google Scholar
Koch, D. G., Borucki, W., Dunham, E., Jenkins, J., Webster, L., & Witteborn, F. 2000, CCD Photometry Tests for a Mission to Detect Earth-Size Planets in the Extended Solar Neighborhood, in SPIE Conference 4013, UV, Optical and IR Space Telescopes and Instruments, Munich, GermanyGoogle Scholar
Koch, D., Borucki, W., Dunham, E., Geary, J., Gilliland, R., Jenkins, J., Latham, D., Bachtell, E., Berry, D., Deininger, W., Duren, R., Gautier, T. N., Gillis, L., Mayer, D., Miller, C., Shafer, D., Sobeck, C., Stewart, C., & Weiss, M. 2004, Overview and status of the Kepler Mission, in SPIE Conf 5487, Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Space Telescopes, Glasgow, ScotlandGoogle Scholar
Krivova, N. A., Solanki, S. K. & Floyd, L. 2006, A&A, 452, 631 Google Scholar
Niarchos, P.G., Munari, U., & Zwitter, T. 2007 these proceedings, 244Google Scholar
Sahu, K. C. & Gilliland, R.L. 2003, ApJ, 584, 1042 Google Scholar