Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21821101c&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #211.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Kepler Mission has been designed to determine the frequency of Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their stars by detecting the 100 part-per-million change in brightness as the planet transits. With this precision, Kepler is able to detect transits of giant planets with signal-to-noise ratios up to several hundred, enabling precise radius measurements and the detailed study of planet characteristics including occultations and reflected light. In February 2011, the Kepler Mission announced some 1200 planet candidates from the first 132 days of observations. Of these, more than 160 are giant planet candidates with radii between 6 and 15 Earth radii. The Kepler science team has formed a working group to coordinate the follow-up observations of these candidates and to measure the distributions of the characteristics of this statistically significant set of candidates. One key goal of this group is to determine the false-positive rate for giant planet candidates. To this end, we have selected a control group of candidates that were subjected to a series of follow-up observations, including radial velocity measurements, to attempt to determine what fraction of the candidates can be confirmed as planets. We report on the early findings of this group and review some of the results from individual giant planets.
Kepler was selected as the 10th mission of the Discovery Program. Funding for this mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission Directorate.
Caldwell Douglas A.
Kepler Giant Planet Working Group
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