Latest News

• 1/25/12 - MAST has not yet received the new list of 2,326 Planet Candidates, but it's expected to arrive "any day now". We will announce it's availability as soon as it's received and implemented within MAST. The current planet candidate table was received in April, 2011 and contains 1235 targets.

• 1/6/12 - The Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog is now available.

• 12/07/11 - The Kepler Project announced this week an accelerated data release schedule. This schedule accelerates all data except for those included in existing agreements between Guest Observers and the Kepler Asteroseismological Science Consortium. Data from quarters 4, 5, and 6 (Dec 2009-Sep 2010) will be released on Jan 7, 2012. Quarters 7, 8, and 9 (Sep 2010-Jun 2011) will be released on Jul 28, 2012. Quarters 10, 11, 12, and 13 (Jun 2011-Jun 2012) will be released on Oct 28, 2012. All data will be available through the Kepler Data Search interface. Quarters collected after Q13 will have no exclusive data use period.

• 12/02/11 - Data Release Notes 12 for Quarter 9 data is now available.

• 11/30/11 - Updated Cotrending Basis Vector (CBV) files for quarters 1 though 9 are now available.

• 11/29/11 - Enhanced Target Search form containing additional magnitudes, colors, and non_KIC targets is now available.

Quick Links

• Kepler Data Search - search for and retrieve Kepler Data.

• Kepler Target Search - find targets on the Kepler CCDs.

• Enhanced Kepler Target Search - similar to target search with additional on-CCD non-KIC targets, colors, and magnitudes.

• General Search Information - Information on search syntax.

• Kepler Public Light Curves - Information on quick access to the public lightcurves.

• Kepler Data Release Notes - these notes describe the data, the processing, and the known deficiencies associated with each release of Kepler data, including the most recent one. They are a critical read for anyone wishing to draw scientifically valid conclusions from the analysis or interpretation of Kepler data.

• Pipeline Processing Papers - Three SPIE papers presented at the Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy Conference (27-30 June 2010) describe the main components of the Kepler data processing system.

• List of Released Planetary Candidates

• List of "False Positives" - A list of light curves showing planetary transit-like features, but which further analysis led the science team to conclude that something else caused the feature.

Kepler Mission Description

Kepler, a NASA Strategic mission launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on March 6, 2009, is designed to stare at a 105 square degree region of the sky in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. The mission's goal is to obtain long-term, unfiltered, and precise light curves of up to 100,000 cool stars and search for periodic transits of planets as small as the Earth. A secondary objective of the mission is to study rapid oscillations of the target stars in order to determine their ages, radii, and metallic chemical compositions of planet-hosting stars. The Kepler Science page and Science Goals pages lay out the scientific objectives in some detail.

The science operations phase of the mission began on May 12, 2009. Since then Kepler has monitored the same sky field almost continuously. The principal exception is for monthly data downlinks during which the spacecraft must turn away from the monitored field, reorient toward the Earth for the downlink, and return to the field. The spacecraft also "rolls" every three months to allow for continous illumination of Kepler's solar arrays. A table of scheduled quarterly rolls, each lasting about 1 day, is given on the MAST/Kepler FAQ page (see FAQ tab in left "gutter"). The fields of view of 42 CCDs covers a four-way symmetrical pattern on the sky such that the same stars remain on the detectors during the mission. Although the Kepler field covers a large sky area containing millions of stars, data from small regions around only 150,000 targets are recorded and stored onboard the spacecraft. The default integration time is about 30 minutes, although a small number of asteroseismology and other targets of interest are recorded with integration times of about 1 minute.

The mission has a nominal lifetime of three and one half years to pursue its core science objectives. These objectives will be carried out by Science Principal Investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, the Kepler Science Team, the Kepler Participating Scientists, and the Kepler Asteroseismology Science Consortium. In addition, a limited Guest Observer (GO) program, dedicated to general (non-exoplanetary) astrophysics has been established. Proposal solicitations will be made on an annual basis, resources permitting, by NASA Headquarters. The GO program is administered from NASA's Ames Research Center. Information of interest to potential GO proposers can be found at the GO program website and in NASA's omnibus annual announcement Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences 2010 NASA ROSES.

A map of where Kepler's Field of View in the sky was obtained from the Project and is shown below. Clicking on this image will bring up a magnified view. Users can reconnoiter the Kepler field in detail by going to the FFI display page.

Investigators interested in whether targets included in the MAST/Kepler ("KIC") database lie on any of the 42 Kepler detector fields should first consult the Kepler Target Search form. Users are also emphatically advised not to use solely color-derived quantities like Teff, logg, etc. to select their targets for proposals.

As the mission proceeds, the Project will periodically drop stars as exoplanetary search candidates. As it does so, MAST will provide access to lists of targets and/or data released as notifications in the Dropped Target and Published Target tabs under the Search and Retrieval item on the left banner of this page and in the Public Light Curves link in the Quick Links section above. As data become nonproprietary, the restrictions against accessing them, which are denoted by the "yellow band" on the Retrieval page, will disappear. In addition to the Dropped and Target lists, Kepler light curves and associated ground-based follow up data have been also placed on MAST's Kepler High Level Science Products site.