Kepler’s Missing Planets: Using QATS to Search for Planets with TTVs
Abstract
Thousands of planet candidates have been discovered in the Kepler data. Many of the multi-planet systems show dynamical interactions between the planets via transit timing variations (TTVs). Systems displaying TTVs allow for precise mass measurements to be made without any radial velocity followup, and even allow for the detection and characterization of non-transiting companions. While systems with large amplitude TTVs are thus one of the most interesting subsets of Kepler candidates, planet discovery pipelines largely search only for strictly periodic transits; their sensitivity to planets with TTVs greater than even half the transit duration are greatly reduced and many such systems may be missed.We present initial results from our quasi-periodic automated transit search (QATS), which explicitly searches for planets with TTVs up to 3% of its period. Using this method, we have discovered several completely new planet candidates, often with periods near resonance to known KOIs and showing anti-correlated TTVs. We present notable features and preliminary analysis of the most exciting candidates.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #225
- Pub Date:
- January 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015AAS...22510504K