We outline a proposal to use the Kepler spacecraft in two-wheel mode to monitor a handful of young associations and open clusters, for a few weeks each. Judging from the experience of similar projects using ground-based telescopes and the CoRoT spacecraft, this program would transform our understanding of early stellar evolution through the study of pulsations, rotation, activity, the detection and characterisation of eclipsing binaries, and the possible detection of transiting exoplanets. Importantly, Kepler's wide field-of-view would enable key spatially extended, nearby regions to be monitored in their entirety for the first time, and the proposed observations would exploit unique synergies with the GAIA ESO spectroscopic survey and, in the longer term, the GAIA mission itself. We also outline possible strategies for optimising the photometric performance of Kepler in two-wheel mode by modelling pixel sensitivity variations and other systematics.
@article{arxiv.1309.0737,
title = {Monitoring young associations and open clusters with Kepler in two-wheel mode},
author = {S. Aigrain and S. Alencar and R. Angus and J. Bouvier and E. Flaccomio and E. Gillen and J. Guzik and L. Hebb and S. Hodgkin and A. McQuillan and G. Micela and E. Moraux and H. Parviainen and S. Randich and S. Reece and S. Roberts and K. Zwintz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.0737},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures, white paper submitted in response to NASA call for community input for alternative science investigations for the Kepler spacecraft