ADAPTIVE OPTICS IMAGES. III. 87 KEPLER OBJECTS OF INTEREST

The Kepler mission has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets, but some of the planet candidates identified by Kepler may actually be astrophysical false positives or planets whose transit depths are diluted by the presence of another star. Adaptive optics images made with ARIES at the MMT o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astronomical journal 2014-11, Vol.148 (5), p.1-15
Main Authors: Dressing, Courtney D, Adams, Elisabeth R, Dupree, Andrea K, Kulesa, Craig, McCarthy, Don
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive optics
APERTURES
Approximation
APPROXIMATIONS
ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BRIGHTNESS
Companion stars
CORRECTIONS
DETECTION
Extrasolar planets
OPTICS
Planet detection
PLANETS
SATELLITES
SENSITIVITY
STARS
VISIBLE RADIATION
Visual
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Summary:The Kepler mission has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets, but some of the planet candidates identified by Kepler may actually be astrophysical false positives or planets whose transit depths are diluted by the presence of another star. Adaptive optics images made with ARIES at the MMT of 87 Kepler Objects of Interest place limits on the presence of fainter stars in or near the Kepler aperture. We detected visual companions within 1" for 5 stars, between 1" and 2" for 7 stars, and between 2" and 4" for 15 stars. For those systems, we estimate the brightness of companion stars in the Kepler bandpass and provide approximate corrections to the radii of associated planet candidates due to the extra light in the aperture. For all stars observed, we report detection limits on the presence of nearby stars. ARIES is typically sensitive to stars approximately 5.3 Ks magnitudes fainter than the target star within 1" and approximately 5.7 Ks magnitudes fainter within 2", but can detect stars as faint as Delta Ks = 7.5 under ideal conditions.
ISSN:1538-3881
0004-6256
1538-3881
DOI:10.1088/0004-6256/148/5/78