Kepler Mission Information

Kepler Mission

The Kepler Mission, a NASA Discovery mission launched on March 6, 2009, is the first space mission to search for Earth-size and smaller planets in the habitable zone of other stars in our neighborhood of the galaxy. Kepler is a special-purpose spacecraft that precisely measures the light variations from thousands of distant stars, looking for planetary transits. When a planet passes in front of its parent star, as seen from our solar system, it blocks a small fraction of the light from that star; this is known as a transit. Searching for transits of distant Earths is like looking for the drop in brightness when a moth flies across a searchlight. Measuring repeated transits, all with a regular period, duration and change in brightness, provides a method for discovering and confirming planets and their orbits—planets the size of Earth and smaller in the habitable zone around other stars similar to our Sun. Kepler continuously monitors over 100,000 stars similar to our Sun for brightness changes produced by planetary transits.

See the Kepler data release schedule.

Exoplanet Archive Kepler resources

General Documentation

• Kepler Extended Mission data philosophy
• Interactive table help documentation
• How to request a Kepler number
• Interactive table of Kepler numbers, KOI numbers and KIC identifiers.

Threshold Crossing Events

A Threshold Crossing Event (TCE) is a sequence of transit-like features in the flux time series of a given target that resembles the signature of a transiting planet to a sufficient degree that the target is passed on for further analysis.

• Threshold-Crossing Events (TCEs) interactive table.
• Q1-Q12 TCE release notes and supplement
• Paper describing the TCE detection process for Q1-Q12 Tenenbaum et al (2012)
• Threshold Crossing Event (TCE) table column definitions.
• Data Validation reports come from the Kepler pipeline. A multi-page report is produced for each KIC source with one or more TCEs and a 1-page summary is produced for each TCE.
• Data validation (DV) summary file help
• Data validation (DV) reports and summaries are available from the popup bubbles in the TCE and KOI tables or select rows in the TCE table and use the Generate DV pdf option at the top.
• DV reports and summaries can also be downloaded using wget scripts. See the bulk data download page.
• Download pdf file (8 Gb) of 1-page summaries from all current KOI (candidates and false positives).
• Paper describing and interpreting the centroid tests reported in the DV reports and one-page summaries: Bryson et al (2013)

Kepler Object of Interest (Planetary Candidates)

The Kepler Project identifies potential planetary candidates from the TCE list and designates these objects as Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs). These objects are subjected to futher vetting and at this stage, some objects will be flagged as false positives. For more information on this process, see the Kepler Extended Mission data philosophy.

• All KOI tables are displayed in a single interactive table with separate tabs for each table (i.e. Q1-6, Q1-8, cumulative, etc). Column selection and filtering will apply to all tabs, allowing easier comparison of values across KOI tables. A complete list of how table functions operate with tabs is given here.
• Current KOI tables:
  • Cumulative: Description, Interactive Table
  • Q1-8: Description, Interactive Table
  • Q1-6: Description, Interactive Table
• Kepler Objects of Interest table column defintions

Stellar information for observed Kepler targets

The stellar table contains parameters for all targets observed by Kepler for the purpose of finding transiting planets. The current stellar table matches the values used by the Kepler pipeline when fitting TCEs identified in the Q1-Q12 data. Future deliveries will include values provided by the Kepler Stellar working group.

• Interactive table
• Table column definitions
• To download the complete table, use the API: see the instructions (including links for different formats and tips to contruct queries) or download the complete table in IPAC table format.

Archive tools for working with Kepler data

• Kepler Light Curve search interface. Includes links to interactive plotting and periodogram tools
• Kepler Transit Predictor Tool

Additional Mission Resources

• Kepler discoveries
• MAST Archive: The Kepler mission archive at MAST contains proprietary and public light curves and pixel data, the Kepler Input Catalog, Data Release Notes and auxillary mission data.
• Kepler Science Center: The Kepler Project provides community opportunities and resources to both develop observing programs and mine the Kepler data archive for exoplanet candidates and more general astrophysics.