Kepler Data Release Notes

The NASA Exoplanet Archive serves public Kepler light curves. As part of the NASA Exoplanet Archive service, the data are formatted into ASCII for human and machine readable use, and a standard set of time series statistics are performed on the light curves including the calculation of the mean, median, dispersion, and chi-square.

Reprocessed Kepler light curves from quarters 0-4 are now available in the archive. Reprocessed Kepler light curves from quarters 5-8 will be released at a later date. You can access the FITS files by clicking the Kepler Light Curves link on the left of our home page. The reprocessing makes use of an updated version of the SOC pipeline that includes several improvements:

• an improved detrending algorithm (i.e., PDC MAP) that removes instrumental artifacts while retaining astrophysical signals
• the addition of the background flux time series measured for the optimal aperture
• the addition of RMS CDPP measurements at 3, 6 and 12 hour time scales

For more information, please see the data release notes here.

In February 2011, the Kepler Project released approximately 390,000 light curves from Quarters 0, 1, and 2 of the mission. In the course of processing these early release light curves, the NASA Exoplanet Archive has discovered a very small number of anomalies. The anomalies are known to the Kepler Project and will be addressed in future data releases by the project.

The number of light curves affected is very small and are identified below.

1. Light curves containing all null or all negative flux values.
   
   
   • A modest number of light curves contain invalid flux light curve data, because all of the flux values and/or the flux uncertainties are null. These curves are not available through the NASA Exoplanet Archive at present; as these light curves are corrected, they will be added into the NASA Exoplanet Archive
     
     Q3 Long Cadence:
     • KIC 100001473
     
     Q4 Long Cadence:
     • KIC 100001644
     
     Q2 Short Cadence:
     • KIC 4270687
     
     Q3 Short Cadence:
     • KIC 5429163

In January 2012, the Kepler Project released approximately 498,000 light curves from Quarters 4, 5, and 6 of the mission. Due to processing problems, the NASA Exoplanet Archive had issues extracting metadata from a small number of files. They will be excluded until the processing issues can be addressed.

The number of light curves affected is very small and are identified below.

Q6 Long Cadence:

• KIC 8454245
• KIC 10383429
• KIC 10448626