Related papers: Science Merit Function for the KEPLER Mission

The amount of collected data in many scientific fields is increasing, all of them requiring a common task: extract knowledge from massive, multi parametric data sets, as rapidly and efficiently possible. This is especially true in astronomy…

Recent discoveries imply that Early Mars was habitable for life-as-we-know-it; that Enceladus might be habitable; and that many stars have Earth-sized exoplanets whose insolation favors surface liquid water. These exciting discoveries make…

Kepler will monitor a sufficient number of stars that it is likely to detect single transits of planets with periods longer than the mission lifetime. We show that by combining the exquisite Kepler photometry of such transits with precise…

We develop a general method to fit the planetary distribution function (PLDF) to exoplanet survey data. This maximum likelihood method accommodates more than one planet per star and any number of planet or target star properties.…

We describe a high-precision Doppler search for giant planets orbiting a well-defined sample of metal-poor dwarfs in the field. This experiment constitutes a fundamental test of theoretical predictions which will help discriminate between…

The dynamo process is believed to drive the magnetic activity of stars like the Sun that have an outer convection zone. Large spectroscopic surveys showed that there is a relation between the rotation periods and the cycle periods: the…

Three transiting exoplanet candidate stars were discovered in a ground-based photometric survey prior to the launch of NASA's {\it Kepler} mission. {\it Kepler} observations of them were obtained during Quarter 1 of the {\it Kepler}…

K2 is the mission concept for a repurposed Kepler mission that uses two reaction wheels to maintain the satellite attitude and provide ~85 days of coverage for ten 105-deg^2 fields along the ecliptic in the first 2.5 years of operation. We…

In addition to its great potential for characterizing extra-solar planetary systems the Kepler mission is providing unique data on stellar oscillations. A key aspect of Kepler asteroseismology is the application to solar-like oscillations…

NASA's Kepler Mission revolutionized exoplanet science in the early part of the 2010's. Looking back from the perspective of the end of that decade, Kepler appears to have burst upon the scene ready for battle, like Athena springing forth,…

The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of their population. This large, homogeneous catalog of discoveries has enabled rigorous studies of the occurrence rate of exoplanets and…

We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in the first three quarters of photometry data acquired by the Kepler Mission. The targets of the search include 151,722 stars which were observed over the full interval and…

(abridged) A complete census of planetary systems around a volume-limited sample of solar-type stars (FGK dwarfs) in the Solar neighborhood with uniform sensitivity down to Earth-mass planets within their Habitable Zones out to several AUs…

NASA's Kepler mission observed background regions across its field of view for more than three consecutive years using custom designed super apertures (EXBA masks). Since these apertures were designed to capture a region of the sky rather…

Kepler is a space telescope that searches Sun-like stars for planets. Its major goal is to determine {\eta}_Earth, the fraction of Sunlike stars that have planets like Earth. When a planet 'transits' or moves in front of a star, Kepler can…

The Kepler Mission was designed to identify and characterize transiting planets in the Kepler Field of View and to determine their occurrence rates. Emphasis was placed on identification of Earth-size planets orbiting in the Habitable Zone…

Numerous telescopes and techniques have been used to find and study extrasolar planets, but none has been more successful than NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, the smallest planets to…

The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of planets with radii $<4\ R_\oplus$, paving the way for the first statistical studies of the dynamics, formation, and evolution of these sub-Neptunes and super-Earths. Planetary masses are an…

Aims: We predict the exoplanet yield of a space-based mid-infrared nulling interferometer using Monte Carlo simulations. We quantify the number and properties of detectable exoplanets and identify those target stars that have the highest or…

A space-based gravitational microlensing exoplanet survey will provide a statistical census of exoplanets with masses greater than 0.1 Earth-masses and orbital separations ranging from 0.5AU to infinity. This includes analogs to all the…