Revised Stellar Properties of Kepler Targets for the Q1-17 (DR25) Transit Detection Run

Abstract

The determination of exoplanet properties and occurrence rates using Kepler data critically depends on our knowledge of the fundamental properties (such as temperature, radius and mass) of the observed stars. We present revised stellar properties for 197,096 Kepler targets observed between Quarters 1-17 (Q1-17), which were used for the final transiting planet search run by the Kepler Mission (Data Release 25, DR25). Similar to the Q1-16 catalog by Huber et al. the classifications are based on conditioning published atmospheric parameters on a grid of Dartmouth isochrones, with significant improvements in the adopted methodology and over 29,000 new sources for temperatures, surface gravities or metallicities. In addition to fundamental stellar properties the new catalog also includes distances and extinctions, and we provide posterior samples for each stellar parameter of each star. Typical uncertainties are ∼ 27% in radius, ∼ 17% in mass, and ∼ 51% in density, which is somewhat smaller than previous catalogs due to the larger number of improved log g constraints and the inclusion of isochrone weighting when deriving stellar posterior distributions. On average, the catalog includes a significantly larger number of evolved solar-type stars, with an increase of 43.5% in the number of subgiants. We discuss the overall changes of radii and masses of Kepler targets as a function of spectral type, with particular focus on exoplanet host stars.

Asteroseismology and Gaia: Testing Scaling Relations Using 2200 Kepler Stars with TGAS Parallaxes

“…Furthermore, Gaia DR2 is expected to provide parallaxes for nearly all ≈ 20,000 oscillating Kepler stars (e.g. Mathur et al 2017), allowing unprecedented scaling relation tests and studies which can combine frequency modeling and Gaia data to test and improve interior models from the main sequence to the red-giant branch.…”

Know the Planet, Know the Star: Precise Stellar Densities from Kepler Transit Light Curves

“…In this figure, for each target star, we compare the posterior distributions of log 10 ρ * derived from our transit fitting with the constraints on log 10 ρ * from the Kepler Data Release 25 (DR25) Stellar Properties Catalog by Mathur et al (2017). The posteriors from the Mathur et al (2017) catalog are derived by performing Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database isochrone modeling on input values of T eff , log g, and [Fe/H] obtained from earlier studies relying on a variety of experimental methods, including spectroscopy, flicker, asteroseismology, and previous transit modeling.…”

“…Top block: KOIs for which we achieve ≤ 5% fractional uncertainty on log 10 ρ * (62% of targets); bottom block: KOIs for which we do not. For each KOI, the upper row shows the posterior distribution of log 10 ρ * derived in this work, and the lower row shows the Kepler Data Release 25 constraint (Mathur et al 2017) on log 10 ρ * derived from Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database isochrone modeling. Within each block, the KOIs are sorted from top to bottom in order of increasing median log 10 ρ * from our results.…”

Probing the Deep End of the Milky Way with New Oscillating Kepler Giants

“…The Kepler mission [1] has been observing more than 197,000 stars for almost 4 years [2]. While the mission has been a success for its main goal in terms of looking for extrasolar planets and characterizing them (for habitability, occurrence rates etc.)…”