K2

Map of Observations

Wavelength Coverage

NOTE: The K2 mission is a follow-on to the Kepler mission, operated when the telescope was reduced to two reaction wheels.

The K2 mission observed 100 square degrees for 80 days, each across 20 different pointings along the ecliptic. The mission began when the original Kepler mission ended due to the loss of the second reaction wheel in 2013. The design of the K2 mission needed to periodically change the telescope's pointing to sample a variety of Galactic sight lines to maintain a reasonable pointing stability, balanced via the solar wind. While the mission continued to observe stars to detect transiting exoplanets, the variety of pointings enabled a wider variety of astrophysical research projects; in fact, the K2 mission was fully Guest Investigator-driven. The mission produced the same pixel-level and lightcurve data products as the original Kepler mission, however, the mission's planet search pipeline was not run.  A number of community-contributed lightcurves with pointing drift errors greatly mitigated were provided as High Level Science Products, and can complement the mission data in many science cases.

Active From

Feb. 4, 2014 - Sept. 26, 2018

Resolution 

4 arcseconds / pixel

Capabilities

• Time Series
• Photometry
• Imaging

Data Availability

Consult the K2 reprocessing status tables (Major and Minor) for each Campaign. Blue means done in a re-processed version, black means done from first release.