Iras-allsky

Jason Eastman (LCOGT) - A re-analysis of KOIs with EXOFAST, vetting with NRES

December
11
S M T W T F S

The Kepler mission has been a tremendous success, but the highly-uncertain stellar surface gravity, unknown eccentricity, and prohibitive telescope time required to measure them are widely understood to be the bottleneck to Kepler follow-up. Using only Kepler data and the stellar effective temperature from the Kepler Input Catalog (KIC), the latest version of my exoplanet fitting software, EXOFAST, typically derives a constraint on the stellar surface gravity exceeding the precision of the KIC by a factor of 3 and, in some cases, up to a factor of 15. My analysis reduces the uncertainties in the fundamental planet parameters by similar factors, is in agreement with asteroseismic results, simultaneously constrains the planetary eccentricity, and derives a more complete list of system properties with MCMC-derived uncertainties, all while greatly reducing the need for expensive follow-up observations. Finally, I will discuss NRES, the Network of Robotic Echelle Spectrographs, which I am building at the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, and how an independent measurement of logg from NRES will enable EXOFAST to robustly identify false positives in the Kepler sample.

Date: December 11th, 2013
Location: MR LCR