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Update on Planet Candidate Follow-up

I wanted to give you all a quick update of what the team has been doing in regards to the interesting possible multiple system Chris talked about earlier and some of our other planet candidates. Chis and Debra have talked previously about taking Keck observations. The data is still pouring in, and we’re still getting spectra of the stars to refine their radii and therefore get a better estimate of the candidate planet’s radius. Keck radial velocity measurements are still coming in for the candidate multiplanet system. More to come once the observations have been completed and the data is reduced. We’re also getting adaptive optics (AO) observations of a subset of our planet candidates. One of the possible false positives for our planet candidates is that the Kepler star is actually a blend of two stars one that is an eclipsing binary. With these AO observations we will get much better spatial resolution and help us see much closer around the Kepler star. This will allow us to separate out and identify any nearby star would become blended with the Kepler star at the resolution of the Kepler’s camera and could  contribute a signal from an eclipsing binary that combined with the Kepler star’s light mimics a planet transit.

Also I wanted to say thank you for everyone who participated in the live chat. It was a lot of fun, we hope to do more of these types of things in the future. If you have ideas for other live chats or other such events let us know in the blog comments or on Talk. Happy Hunting, ~Meg

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