KEPLER OBSERVATIONS OF THREE PRE-LAUNCH EXOPLANET CANDIDATES: DISCOVERY OF TWO ECLIPSING BINARIES AND A NEW EXOPLANET
- National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
- NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 (United States)
- National Solar Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
- NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, 770 South Wilson Avenue Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555 (United States)
- Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT 06515 (United States)
- European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str 2., 85478 Garching (Germany)
Three transiting exoplanet candidate stars were discovered in a ground-based photometric survey prior to the launch of NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler observations of them were obtained during Quarter 1 of the Kepler mission. All three stars are faint by radial velocity follow-up standards, so we have examined these candidates with regard to eliminating false positives and providing high confidence exoplanet selection. We present a first attempt to exclude false positives for this set of faint stars without high-resolution radial velocity analysis. This method of exoplanet confirmation will form a large part of the Kepler mission follow-up for Jupiter-sized exoplanet candidates orbiting faint stars. Using the Kepler light curves and pixel data, as well as medium-resolution reconnaissance spectroscopy and speckle imaging, we find that two of our candidates are binary stars. One consists of a late-F star with an early M companion, while the other is a K0 star plus a late M-dwarf/brown dwarf in a 19 day elliptical orbit. The third candidate (BOKS-1) is an r = 15 G8V star hosting a newly discovered exoplanet with a radius of 1.12 R{sub Jupiter} in a 3.9 day orbit.
- OSTI ID:
- 21476701
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 725, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/725/2/1633; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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