Detection of Potential Transit Signals in 17 Quarters of Kepler Data: Results of the Final Kepler Mission Transiting Planet Search (DR25)
Abstract
We present results of the final Kepler Data Processing Pipeline search for transiting planet signals in the full 17-quarter primary mission data set. The search includes a total of 198,709 stellar targets, of which 112,046 were observed in all 17 quarters and 86,663 in fewer than 17 quarters. We report on 17,230 targets for which at least one transit signature is identified that meets the specified detection criteria: periodicity, minimum of three observed transit events, detection statistic (i.e., signal-to-noise ratio) in excess of the search threshold, and passing grade on three statistical transit consistency tests. Light curves for which a transit signal is identified are iteratively searched for additional signatures after a limb-darkened transiting planet model is fitted to the data and transit events are removed. The search for additional planets adds 16,802 transit signals for a total of 34,032; this far exceeds the number of transit signatures identified in prior pipeline runs. There was a strategic emphasis on completeness over reliability for the final Kepler transit search. A comparison of the transit signals against a set of 3402 well-established, high-quality Kepler Objects of Interest yields a recovery rate of 99.8%. The high recovery rate must be weighed against a large number of false-alarm detections. We examine characteristics of the planet population implied by the transiting planet model fits with an emphasis on detections that would represent small planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their host stars.
Additional Information
© 2016 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 April 19; revised 2016 June 23; accepted 2016 June 30; published 2016 November 11. Kepler was competitively selected as the 10th NASA Discovery mission. Funding for this mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission Directorate. The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the greater Kepler team in building and operating the instrument, collecting and distributing the science data, producing the light curves and validation products employed in this publication, and archiving the results. The light curves and validation products were generated by the Kepler Data Processing Pipeline through the efforts of the Kepler Science Operations Center and Science Office. The Kepler Mission is led by the project office at NASA Ames Research Center. Ball Aerospace built the Kepler photometer and spacecraft, which is operated by the Mission Operations Center at LASP. The light curves are archived at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes; the Data Validation products are archived at the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division within the Science Mission Directorate. All of the pipeline processing described in this paper was performed on NAS Pleiades hardware; the pixel- and flux-level transit injection processing referred to in this paper was also performed on Pleiades. The authors finally wish to acknowledge the years of efforts of William J. Borucki and the late David G. Koch; the Kepler Mission would not have been possible without them.Attached Files
Published - Twicken_2016_AJ_152_158.pdf
Submitted - 1604.06140v4.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 72905
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161216-094751424
- NASA
- Created
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2016-12-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)