PLANETARY CANDIDATES OBSERVED BY KEPLER. III. ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST 16 MONTHS OF DATA

By N. Batalha, J. Rowe, S. Bryson, T. Barclay, C. Burke, Douglas A. Caldwell, J. Christiansen, F. Mullally, S. Thompson, T. Brown and 103 more. 2012

937 citations recorded by the source corpus.

New transiting planet candidates are identified in 16 months (2009 May–2010 September) of data from the Kepler spacecraft. Nearly 5000 periodic transit-like signals are vetted against astrophysical and instrumental false positives yielding 1108 viable new planet candidates, bringing the total count up to over 2300. Improved vetting metrics are employed, contributing to higher catalog reliability. Most notable is the noise-weighted robust averaging of multi-quarter photo-center offsets derived from difference image analysis that identifies likely background eclipsing binaries. Twenty-two months of photometry are used for the purpose of characterizing each of the candidates. Ephemerides (transit epoch, T0, and orbital period, P) are tabulated as well as the products of light curve modeling: reduced radius (RP/R⋆), reduced semimajor axis (d/R⋆), and impact parameter (b). The largest fractional increases are seen for the smallest planet candidates (201% for candidates smaller than 2 R⊕ compared to 53% for candidates larger than 2 R⊕) and those at longer orbital periods (124% for candidates outside of 50 day orbits versus 86% for candidates inside of 50 day orbits). The gains are larger than expected from increasing the observing window from 13 months (Quarters 1–5) to 16 months (Quarters 1–6) even in regions of parameter space where one would have expected the previous catalogs to be complete. Analyses of planet frequencies based on previous catalogs will be affected by such incompleteness. The fraction of all planet candidate host stars with multiple candidates has grown from 17% to 20%, and the paucity of short-period giant planets in multiple systems is still evident. The progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods with each new catalog release suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Precise time series photometry for the Kepler-2.0 mission (2014, background): “…has led to the detection of thousands of planet candidates, ranging from super-Jupiter to sub-Earth size, including some located in the habitable zone of their host stars (Borucki et al. 011a,b; Batalha et al. 2013; Burke et al. 2014), and the analysis of the full 4-year dataset is still underway.”
DENSITY AND ECCENTRICITY OF KEPLER PLANETS (2012, background): “The spectacular success of the Kepler mission (Borucki et al. 2010a, 2011; Batalha et al. 2013, hereafter B12) opens our eyes to the world of low-mass planets (also see radial velocity discoveries, e.g. Mayor et al. 2011).”
THE OCCURRENCE OF POTENTIALLY HABITABLE PLANETS ORBITING M DWARFS ESTIMATED FROM THE FULL KEPLER DATASET AND AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE DETECTION SENSITIVITY (2015, background): “We found that 155 putative planet candidates had periods and epochs matching those of known planet candidates or confirmed planets (Borucki et al. 2010, 2011a,b; Batalha et al. 2013; Burke et al. 2014).”
The Evaporation Valley in the Kepler Planets (2017, background): “Specifically, the most common type of exoplanets are smaller than Neptune (.4 R⊕, e.g., Youdin 2011; Howard et al. 2012; Batalha et al. 2013; Petigura et al. 2013; Burke et al. 2014; Morton et al. 2016) and have masses of a few to tens of Earth masses.”
A FRAMEWORK FOR CHARACTERIZING THE ATMOSPHERES OF LOW-MASS LOW-DENSITY TRANSITING PLANETS (2013, result): “In addition, results for NASA’s Kepler Mission (Borucki et al. 2010, 2011; Batalha et al. 2013) have now shown that 2–3 R⊕ planets, perhaps at the boundary between super-Earths with thin outgassed atmospheres and sub-Neptunes with accreted envelopes, appear to be an extremely common type of planet…”
A STELLAR-MASS-DEPENDENT DROP IN PLANET OCCURRENCE RATES (2014, methodology): “…2013; Dumusque et al. 2014), the Kepler mission excels in providing statistics on planetary architectures, with a survey-bias that is relatively well understood in terms of false positives (Fressin et al. 2013), completeness (e.g., Batalha et al. 2013), and stellar noise (Christiansen et al. 2012).”
Breaking the chains: hot super-Earth systems from migration and disruption of compact resonant chains (2017, background): “Statistical studies suggest that about one out of three solar- E-mail: izidoro.costa@gmail.com type stars (FGK spectral types) host a super-Earth with orbital period shorter than 100 d (Mayor et al. 2011; Howard et al. 2012; Fressin et al. 2013; Petigura et al. 2013).”
SWEET-Cat: A catalogue of parameters for Stars With ExoplanETs - I. New atmospheric parameters and masses for 48 stars with planets (2013, background): “1 For an updated table we point tohttp://www.exoplanet.eu pler (Batalha et al. 2013).”
Low simulated radiation limit for runaway greenhouse climates (2013, background): “It also sets the inner boundary of the circumstellar “habitable zone”[15, 16] in which the Kepler mission is presently identifying planetary candidates[17].”
SPECTRO-THERMOMETRY OF M DWARFS AND THEIR CANDIDATE PLANETS: TOO HOT, TOO COOL, OR JUST RIGHT? (2013, methodology): “We included all planet candidates listed in the NASA exoplanet archive as of 2013 February (Batalha et al. 2013).”
MAKE SUPER-EARTHS, NOT JUPITERS: ACCRETING NEBULAR GAS ONTO SOLID CORES AT 0.1 AU AND BEYOND (2014, background): “About 1 in 5 Sunlike stars harbor planets having radii of 1–4 R⊕ at distances of 0.05–0.3 AU (Howard et al. 2010; Batalha et al. 2013; Petigura et al. 2013; Dong & Zhu 2013; Fressin et al. 2013; Rowe et al. 2014).”
THE MASS–RADIUS RELATION FOR 65 EXOPLANETS SMALLER THAN 4 EARTH RADII (2013, background): “The Kepler Mission has found an abundance of planets with radii RP < 4R⊕ (Batalha et al. 2013); the most recent head-count indicates 3206 planet candidates in this size range (NASA exoplanet Archive, queried 15 Jan. 2014), most of which are real (Morton & Johnson 2011).”
THE RADIUS DISTRIBUTION OF PLANETS AROUND COOL STARS (2013, background): “…the first discoveries are not representative samples; rather, close-in giant planets are relatively rare (Wright et al. 2012; Howard et al. 2010) in comparison to the new populations of exoplanets now being revealed by the Kepler Mission (Borucki et al. 2011; Batalha et al. 2012; Burke 2013).”