Related papers: Re-Evaluating Small Long-Period Confirmed Planets …
We show that the claimed confirmed planet Kepler-452b (a.k.a. K07016.01, KIC 8311864) can not be confirmed using a purely statistical validation approach. Kepler detects many more periodic signals from instrumental effects than it does from…
The Kepler mission has discovered over 2500 exoplanet candidates in the first two years of spacecraft data, with approximately 40% of them in candidate multi-planet systems. The high rate of multiplicity combined with the low rate of…
One of the primary mission goals of the Kepler space telescope is to detect Earth-like terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around Sun-like stars. Unfortunately, such planets are at the detection limit. Estimating their statistical…
The unprecedented photometric precision of Kepler mission allows searching for Earth-like planets. However, it remains difficult to distinguish these low signal-to-noise planets from the false alarms originating from correlated and…
We extend the statistical analysis of Lissauer et al. (2012, ApJ 750, 112), which demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple transiting systems (multis) represent true transiting planets, and develop therefrom…
We present a framework to conservatively estimate the probability that any particular planet-like transit signal observed by the Kepler mission is in fact a planet, prior to any ground-based follow-up efforts. We use Monte Carlo methods…
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…
We present a statistical analysis that demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Kepler candidate multiple transiting systems (multis) indeed represent true, physically-associated transiting planets. Binary stars provide the primary…
Surveys searching for transiting exoplanets have found many more candidates than they have been able to confirm as true planets. This situation is especially acute with the Kepler survey, which has found over 2300 candidates but has…
We report on the orbital architectures of Kepler systems having multiple planet candidates identified in the analysis of data from the first six quarters of Kepler data and reported by Batalha et al. (2013). These data show 899 transiting…
Light curves from the Kepler Mission contain valuable information on the nature of the phenomena producing the transit-like signals. To assist in exploring the possibility that they are due to an astrophysical false positive, we describe a…
The Kepler mission has discovered thousands of planet candidates. Currently, some of them have already been discarded; more than 200 have been confirmed by follow-up observations, and several hundreds have been validated. However, most of…
(Abridged) NASA's Kepler mission has provided several thousand transiting planet candidates, yet only a small subset have been confirmed as true planets. Therefore, the most fundamental question about these candidates is the fraction of…
We present an investigation of twelve candidate transiting planets from Kepler with orbital periods ranging from 34 to 207 days, selected from initial indications that they are small and potentially in the habitable zone (HZ) of their…
Space-based photometric missions widely use statistical validation tools for vetting transiting planetary candidates, particularly when other traditional methods of planet confirmation are unviable. In this paper, we refute the planetary…
The Kepler mission has discovered a large number of planetary systems. We analyze the implications of the discovered single/multi-exoplanet systems from Kepler's data. As done in previous works, we test a simple model in which the intrinsic…
We investigate whether any multi-planet systems among Kepler candidates (2011 February release) can harbor additional terrestrial-mass planets or smaller bodies. We apply the "packed planetary systems" hypothesis that suggests all planetary…
We present a new catalog of Kepler planet candidates that prioritizes accuracy of planetary dispositions and properties over uniformity. This catalog contains 4376 transiting planet candidates, including 1791 residing within 709…
The Kepler mission has to date found almost 6,000 planetary transit-like signals, utilizing three years of data for over 170,000 stars at extremely high photometric precision. Due to its design, contamination from eclipsing binaries,…
We perform a systematic search for rings around 168 Kepler planet candidates with sufficient signal-to-noise ratios that are selected from all the short-cadence data. We fit ringed and ringless models to their lightcurves, and compare the…