Bruce Clarke

Measuring Transit Signal Recovery in the Kepler Pipeline. III. Completeness of the Q1-Q17 DR24 Planet Candidate Catalogu...

Published in arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.05729

With each new version of the Kepler pipeline and resulting planet candidate catalogue, an updated measurement of the underlying planet population can only be recovered with an corresponding measurement of the Kepler pipeline detection efficiency. Here, we present measurements of the sensitivity of the pipeline (version 9.2) used to generate the Q1-...

Detection of Potential Transit Signals in 17 Quarters of Kepler Data: Results of the Final Kepler Mission Transiting Pla...

Published in arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.06140

We present results of the final Kepler Data Processing Pipeline search for transiting planet signals in the full 17-quarter primary mission dataset. The search includes a total of 198,709 stellar targets of which 112,046 were observed in all 17 quarters and 86,663 in fewer than 17 quarters. We report on 17,230 targets for which at least one transit...

Identifying False Alarms in the Kepler Planet Candidate Catalog

Published in arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.03204

We present a new automated method to identify instrumental features masquerading as small, long period planets in the\ kepler\ planet candidate catalog. These systematics, mistakenly identified as planet transits, can have a strong impact on occurrence rate calculations because they cluster in a region of parameter space where Kepler s sensitivity ...

Terrestrial planet occurrence rates for the Kepler GK dwarf sample

Published in The Astrophysical Journal

We measure planet occurrence rates using the planet candidates discovered by the Q1-Q16 Kepler pipeline search. This study examines planet occurrence rates for the Kepler GK dwarf target sample for planet radii, $0.75\;\ leqslant\; $ $R _ \ rm p $ $\;\ leqslant $2.5$R _ \ oplus $, and orbital periods, $50\;\ leqslant $ $P _ \ mathrm orb $ $\ leqsla...

Planetary candidates observed by Kepler IV: Planet sample from Q1-Q8 (22 Months)

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

We provide updates to the Kepler planet candidate sample based upon nearly two years of high-precision photometry (ie, Q1-Q8). From an initial list of nearly 13,400 threshold crossing events, 480 new host stars are identified from their flux time series as consistent with hosting transiting planets. Potential transit signals are subjected to furthe...

Detection of potential transit signals in the first 12 quarters of Kepler Mission data

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in the first three years of photometry data acquired by the Kepler mission. The targets of the search include 112,321 targets that were observed over the full interval and an additional 79,992 targets that were observed for a subset of the full interval. From this set of targets we fi...

Detection of Potential Transit Signals in the First Twelve Quarters of Kepler Mission Data

Published in arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.2915

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in the first three years of photometry data acquired by the Kepler Mission. The targets of the search include 112,321 targets which were observed over the full interval and an additional 79,992 targets which were observed for a subset of the full interval. From this set of targets we ...

A class of eccentric binaries with dynamic tidal distortions discovered with Kepler

Published in The Astrophysical Journal

We have discovered a class of eccentric binary systems within the Kepler data archive that have dynamic tidal distortions and tidally induced pulsations. Each has a uniquely shaped light curve that is characterized by periodic brightening or variability at timescales of 4-20 days, frequently accompanied by shorter period oscillations. We can explai...

Transit timing observations from Kepler. II. Confirmation of two multiplanet systems via a non-parametric correlation an...

Published in The Astrophysical Journal

We present a new method for confirming transiting planets based on the combination of transit timing variations (TTVs) and dynamical stability. Correlated TTVs provide evidence that the pair of bodies is in the same physical system. Orbital stability provides upper limits for the masses of the transiting companions that are in the planetary regime....

Detection of potential transit signals in the first three quarters of Kepler mission data

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in the first three quarters of photometry data acquired by the Kepler mission. The targets of the search include 151,722 stars which were observed over the full interval and an additional 19,132 stars which were observed for only one or two quarters. From this set of targets we find a...

Characteristics of Kepler planetary candidates based on the first data set

Published in The Astrophysical Journal

In the spring of 2009, the Kepler Mission commenced high-precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to determine the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets, conduct a guest observer program, and obtain asteroseismic data on a wide variety of stars. On 2010 June 15, the Kepler Mission released most of the data from the first quarter of ...

Kepler Science Operations Center architecture

We give an overview of the operational concepts and architecture of the Kepler Science Processing Pipeline. Designed, developed, operated, and maintained by the Kepler Science Operations Center (SOC) at NASA Ames Research Center, the Science Processing Pipeline is a central element of the Kepler Ground Data System. The SOC consists of an office at ...

Initial characteristics of Kepler short cadence data

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The Kepler Mission offers two options for observations—either long cadence (LC) used for the bulk of core mission science, or short cadence (SC) which is used for applications such as asteroseismology of solar-like stars and transit timing measurements of exoplanets where the 1 minute sampling is critical. We discuss the characteristics of SC data ...

Overview of the Kepler science processing pipeline

Published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The Kepler Mission Science Operations Center (SOC) performs several critical functions including managing the~ 156,000 target stars, associated target tables, science data compression tables and parameters, as well as processing the raw photometric data downlinked from the spacecraft each month. The raw data are first calibrated at the pixel level ...

New Developments in the Kepler Science Operations Center Pipeline Build 7.0

The Kepler Science Pipeline provides calibrated pixels, simple and systematic error- corrected aperture photometry, and centroid locations for all 165,000 Long Cadence (LC) target stars sampled at 29.5 min integrations, along with associated uncertainties. Based on the first 44 days of data collected by Kepler, over 700 planetary candidates have be...

Computational Challenges in Processing the Q1-Q16 Kepler Data Set

Since launch on March 6th, 2009, NASA s Kepler Space Telescope has collected 48 months of data on over 195,000 targets. The raw data are rife with instrumental and astrophysical noise that must be removed in order to detect and model the transit-like signals present in the data. Calibrating the raw pixels, generating and correcting the flux light c...

Planet Population Statistics With Kepler Q1-Q16: Stellar Effective Temperature Dependence

We explore extrasolar planet population statistics and the dependence of planet occurrence rates on stellar effective temperature from analysis of the Kepler Q1-Q16 planet candidate sample. The analysis takes advantage of the recent work on the Q1-Q16 Kepler planet candidate sample, extensive Monte-Carlo transit signal injection and recovery tests ...

Characterization and Validation of Transiting Planets in the Kepler and TESS Pipelines

Published in IAU General Assembly

Light curves for Kepler targets are searched for transiting planet signatures in the Transiting Planet Search (TPS) component of the Science Operations Center (SOC) Processing Pipeline. Targets for which the detection threshold is exceeded are subsequently processed in the Data Validation (DV) Pipeline component. The primary functions of DV are to ...

VizieR Online Data Catalog: Q3 Kepler s combined photometry (Christiansen+, 2012)

Published in VizieR Online Data Catalog

For users interested in the ensemble noise statistics, for instance those performing completeness calculations, tables of the rms CDPP values for the planetary targets are being made available from the MAST Kepler website (http://archive. stsci. edu/pub/kepler/ catalogs/) starting with all the publicly released data up to Quarter 10. In Table 1 con...

Pixel-Level Analysis Techniques for False-Positive Identification in Kepler Data

The Kepler mission seeks to identify Earth-size exoplanets by detecting transits of their parent star. The resulting transit signature will be small (100 ppm). Several astrophysical phenomena can mimic an Earth-size transit signature, most notably background eclipsing binaries (BGEBs). As part of a larger false-positive identification effort, pixel...