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Published December 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

Kepler Observations of the Three Pre-Launch Exoplanet Candidates: Discover of Two Eclipsing Binaries and a New Exoplanet

Abstract

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_(Jupiter) in a 3.9 day orbit.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Astronomical Society. Received 2010 August 20; accepted 2010 October 19; published 2010 November 30. We thank Brandon Tingley for his timely review and very helpful comments on our original manuscript. The authors thank the Kepler Science Office and the Science Operations Center personal, particularly Natalie Batalha, Jon Jenkins, and Tim Brown, for their dedicated effort to the mission and for providing us access to the science office data products. The ground-based observations reported here in were obtained at Kitt Peak National Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The Kepler Science Team is thanked for their help and support of the mission and its scientific output. Kepler was selected as the 10th mission of the Discovery Program. Funding for this mission is provided by NASA.

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Created:
August 19, 2023
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October 23, 2023