Related papers: The Kepler Pixel Response Function

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…

We employ electrostatic conversion drift calculations to match CCD pixel signal covariances observed in flat field exposures acquired using candidate sensor devices for the LSST Camera. We thus constrain pixel geometry distortions present…

We present scope (Simulated CCD Observations for Photometric Experimentation), a Python package to create a forward model of telescope detectors and simulate stellar targets with motion relative to the CCD. The primary application of this…

The discovery of an exomoon would provide deep insights into planet formation and the habitability of planetary systems, with transiting examples being particularly sought after. Of the hundreds of Kepler planets now discovered, the…

We define and analyze the photometric orbit (PhO) of an extrasolar planet observed in reflected light. In our definition, the PhO is a Keplerian entity with six parameters: semimajor axis, eccentricity, mean anomaly at some particular time,…

We outline an approach yielding proper motions with higher precision than exists in present catalogs for a sample of stars in the Kepler field. To increase proper motion precision we combine first moment centroids of Kepler pixel data from…

We present ground-based infrared transit observations for four dynamically interacting \textit{Kepler} planets, including Kepler-29b, Kepler-36c, KOI-1783.01, and Kepler-177c, obtained using the Wide-field Infrared Camera on the Hale 200"…

Removing the aberrations introduced by the Point Spread Function (PSF) is a fundamental aspect of astronomical image processing. The presence of noise in observed images makes deconvolution a nontrivial task that necessitates the use of…

Kepler will monitor enough stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the Kepler photometry of such transits with precise radial velocity (RV)…

The EXtreme PREcision Spectrograph (EXPRES) is a new Doppler spectrograph designed to reach a radial velocity measurement precision sufficient to detect Earth-like exoplanets orbiting nearby, bright stars. We report on extensive laboratory…

For a solar-like star, the surface rotation evolves with time, allowing in principle to estimate the age of a star from its surface rotation period. Here we are interested in measuring surface rotation periods of solar-like stars observed…

Difference imaging or image subtraction is a method that measures differential photometry by matching the pointing and point-spread function (PSF) between image frames. It is used for the detection of time-variable phenomena. Here we…

Precise photometric and astrometric measurements on astronomical images require an accurate knowledge of the Point Spread Function (PSF). When the PSF cannot be modelled directly from the image, PSF-reconstruction techniques become the only…

The mission of NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) is to find Earth-like planets orbiting other stars and characterize the atmospheres of these planets using spectroscopy. Because of the enormous brightness ratio between the star and the…

We investigate the role that planet detection order plays in the Kepler planet detection pipeline. The Kepler pipeline typically detects planets in order of descending signal strength (MES). We find that the detectability of transits…

NASA's Kepler, K2 and TESS missions employ Simple Aperture Photometry (SAP) to derive time-series photometry, where an aperture is estimated for each star, and pixels containing each star are summed to create a single light curve. This…

Photometry from Kepler has revealed the presence of cool starspots on the surfaces of thousands of stars, presenting a wide range of spot morphologies and lifetimes. Understanding the lifetime and evolution of starspots across the main…

Context. Kepler-17 is a G2V sun-like star accompanied by a transiting planet with a mass of ~2.5 Jupiter masses and an orbital period of 1.486 d, recently discovered by the Kepler space telescope. This star is highly interesting as a young…

Kepler has detected numerous exoplanet transits by precise measurements of stellar light in a single visible-wavelength band. In addition to detection, the precise photometry provides phase curves of exoplanets, which can be used to study…

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in four years of photometry data acquired by the Kepler Mission. The targets of the search include 111,800 stars which were observed for the entire interval and 85,522 stars…