Adaptive Optics Images III: 87 Kepler Objects of Interest

Abstract

The Kepler mission has revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets, but some of the planet candidates identified by Kepler may actually be astrophysical false positives or planets whose transit depths are diluted by the presence of another star. Adaptive optics images made with ARIES at the MMT of 87 Kepler Objects of Interest place limits on the presence of fainter stars in or near the Kepler aperture. We detected visual companions within 1" for five stars, between 1" and 2" for seven stars, and between 2" and 4" for 15 stars. For those systems, we estimate the brightness of companion stars in the Kepler bandpass and provide approximate corrections to the radii of associated planet candidates due to the extra light in the aperture. For all stars observed, we report detection limits on the presence of nearby stars. ARIES is typically sensitive to stars approximately 5.3 Ks magnitudes fainter than the target star within 1" and approximately 5.7 Ks magnitudes fainter within 2", but can detect stars as faint as delta Ks = 7.5 under ideal conditions.

Accepted to AJ. 16 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. All images and limits will be available on the Kepler Community Follow-up Observing Program website (https://cfop.ipac.caltech.edu)

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler VI: Planet Sample from Q1-Q16 (47 Months)
• The Kepler Follow-Up Observation Program. I. A Catalog of Companions to Kepler Stars from High-Resolution Imaging
• Planetary Candidates Observed by Kepler V: Planet Sample from Q1-Q12 (36 Months)
• Friends of Hot Jupiters II: No Correspondence Between Hot-Jupiter Spin-Orbit Misalignment and the Incidence of Directly Imaged Stellar Companions
• Friends of Hot Jupiters. IV. Stellar companions beyond 50 AU might facilitate giant planet formation, but most are unlikely to cause Kozai-Lidov migration
• Kepler-445, Kepler-446 and the Occurrence of Compact Multiples Orbiting Mid-M Dwarf Stars
• HEK VI: On the Dearth of Galilean Analogs in Kepler and the Exomoon Candidate Kepler-1625b I
• Unresolved Binary Exoplanet Host Stars Fit as Single Stars: Effects on the Stellar Parameters
• A Closer Look at Exoplanet Occurrence Rates: Considering the Multiplicity of Stars Without Detected Planets
• Stellar Companions to TESS Objects of Interest: A Test of Planet-Companion Alignment
• Ondr}ejov echelle spectrograph, ground based support facility for exoplanet missions
• Possible detection of a bimodal cloud distribution in the atmosphere of HAT-P-32\,A\,b from multi-band photometry
• Revising Properties of Planet-Host Binary Systems. III. There is No Observed Radius Gap For Kepler Planets in Binary Star Systems
• Probability of Physical Association of 104 Blended Companions to \textit{Kepler} Objects of Interest Using Visible and Near-Infrared Adaptive Optics Photometry
• Revising Properties of Planet-host Binary Systems II: Apparent Near-Earth Analog Planets in Binaries Are Often Sub-Neptunes
• The Robo-AO KOI Survey: laser adaptive optics imaging of every Kepler exoplanet candidate