English

Identifying False Alarms in the Kepler Planet Candidate Catalog

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2016-06-22 v1

Abstract

We present a new automated method to identify instrumental features masquerading as small, long period planets in the \kepler\ planet candidate catalog. These systematics, mistakenly identified as planet transits, can have a strong impact on occurrence rate calculations because they cluster in a region of parameter space where Kepler's sensitivity to planets is poor. We compare individual transit-like events to a variety of models of real transits and systematic events, and use a Bayesian Information Criterion to evaluate the likelihood that each event is real. We describe our technique and test its performance on simulated data. Results from this technique are incorporated in the \kepler\ Q1-17 DR24 planet candidate catalog of \citet{Coughlin15}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.03204,
  title  = {Identifying False Alarms in the Kepler Planet Candidate Catalog},
  author = {F. Mullally and Jeffery L. Coughlin and Susan E. Thompson and Jessie Christiansen and Christopher Burke and Bruce D. Clarke and Michael R. Haas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.03204},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

6 pages. Accepted for publication in PASP

R2 v1 2026-06-22T12:47:10.232Z