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Published July 2011 | Published
Journal Article Open

Speckle Camera Observations for the NASA Kepler Mission Follow-up Program

Abstract

We present the first results from a speckle imaging survey of stars classified as candidate exoplanet host stars discovered by the Kepler mission. We use speckle imaging to search for faint companions or closely aligned background stars that could contribute flux to the Kepler light curves of their brighter neighbors. Background stars are expected to contribute significantly to the pool of false positive candidate transiting exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission, especially in the case that the faint neighbors are eclipsing binary stars. Here, we describe our Kepler follow-up observing program, the speckle imaging camera used, our data reduction, and astrometric and photometric performance. Kepler stars range from R = 8 to 16 and our observations attempt to provide background non-detection limits 5-6 mag fainter and binary separations of ~0.05-2.0 arcsec. We present data describing the relative brightness, separation, and position angles for secondary sources, as well as relative plate limits for non-detection of faint nearby stars around each of 156 target stars. Faint neighbors were found near 10 of the stars.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Astronomical Society. Received 2011 April 11; accepted 2011 April 29; published 2011 June 8. The authors thank the Kepler Science Office at NASA/Ames for their continued support of the speckle observation program and their financial help with our EMCCD camera upgrade. We thank the anonymous referee for comments which led to an improved presentation. Kepler was selected as the 10th mission of the Discovery Program. Funding for this mission is provided by NASA.

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August 22, 2023
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