Systematic search for long-term transit duration changes in Kepler transiting planets

Characterizing Long-Period Transiting Planets Observed by Kepler

Kepler will monitor a sufficient number of stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the exquisite Kepler photometry of such transits with precise radial velocity observations taken over a reasonable timescale (∼ 6 months) after the transits, and assuming circular orbits, it is possible to estimate the p...

A Systematic Search for Transiting Planets in the K2 Data

Photometry of stars from the K2extension of NASA’s Keplermission is afflicted by systematic effects caused by small (few-pixel) drifts in the telescope pointing and other spacecraft issues. We present a method for searching K2light curves for evidence of exoplanets by simultaneously fitting for these systematics and the transit signals of interest. This method is more computationally expensi...

Kepler: A Search for Terrestrial Planets

The Simple Aperture Photometry (SAP) product generated by the PA (Photometric Analysis) pipeline module and the PDC (Pre-­‐search Data Conditioning) processed data are designed for automated photometry on over 160,000 stars. Although significant effort has been expended to make these products robust and reliable, they do not produce the best photometry for every target. To mitigate the impact o...

Kepler: A Search for Terrestrial Planets

Using Transit Timing Observations to Search for Trojans of Transiting Extrasolar Planets

Theoretical studies predict that Trojans are likely a frequent byproduct of planet formation and evolution. We examine the sensitivity of transit timing observations for detecting Trojan companions to transiting extrasolar planets. We demonstrate that this method offers the potential to detect terrestrial-mass Trojans using existing ground-based observatories. We compare the transit timing vari...