Kepler Astrometry: A Modern Art
Abstract
While the primary science goal for the Kepler mission is the detection and characterization of terrestrial and giant exoplanets through ultra-precision photometry, the telescope is capable of collecting milli-arcsecond precision astrometric data for each of the target stars. This single measurement precision when combined with the large number of observations collected by the mission each quarter over its 5 year lifetime, means Kepler should be sensitive to Jupiter-mass planets and brown dwarfs around some of the nearest stars in the input catalog. For the past year we have been analyzing the Kepler long cadence data of planetary candidates and red giants in an effort to assess the astrometric stability of the data pipeline. In addition to calibrated photometry, the Kepler data products include postage stamp images for all ~4000 observations downloaded per quarter. While our goals is to reach astrometric precisions on the order of a few mas over timescales of weeks to years, mysterious systematic variations have prevented us from doing so. Here, we describe the nature of the systematics, our progress in trying to mitigate them and the potential discoveries which include detecting giants planets at separations that are unreachable by the transit data and estimating the distances to transiting systems through trigonometric parallax.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AAS...22114919T