The Kepler Mission was launched on March 6, 2009 to perform a photometric survey of more than 100,000 dwarf stars to search for terrestrial-size planets with the transit technique. Follow-up observations of planetary candidates identified by detection of transit-like events are needed both for identification of astrophysical phenomena that mimic planetary transits and for characterization of the true planets and planetary systems found by Kepler. We have developed techniques and protocols for detection of false planetary transits and are currently conducting observations on 177 Kepler targets that have been selected for follow-up. A preliminary estimate indicates that between 24% and 62% of planetary candidates selected for follow-up will turn out to be true planets.
@article{arxiv.1001.0352,
title = {The Kepler Follow-up Observation Program},
author = {Thomas N. Gautier and Natalie M. Batalha and William J. Borucki and William D. Cochran and Edward W. Dunham and Steve B. Howell and David G. Koch and David W. Latham and Geo? W. Marcy and Lars A. Buchhave and David R. Ciardi and Michael Endl and Gabor Furesz and Howard Isaacson and Phillip MacQueen and Georgi Mandushev and Lucianne Walkowicz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.0352},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
12 pages, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters