Launched in 2009, the Kepler Mission is surveying a region of our galaxy to determine what fraction of stars
in our galaxy have planets and measure the size distribution of those exoplanets.
Although Kepler completed its primary mission to determine the fraction of stars that have planets in 2013,
it is continuing the search, using a more limited survey mode, under the new name K2.
KOI is the Kepler Objects of Interest catalog listing observed Kepler targets which are flagged as potentially having
exoplanets but may be false positives caused by other types of transient detection. This catalog is produced by the Kepler
project and brought to MAST via NExScI.
"Kepler Published Planets" is a catalog created from NExScI catalogs listing of published exoplanets found using
Kepler. All included metadata is from the published paper.
The Kepler Target Search interface provides access to a 12.5 million row table created by MAST by joining entries from the Kepler Input catalog (KIC) with the Kepler Characteristics table (CT) and merging these with "associated" entries from the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (IRT) project, the USNOb catalog, GALEX, the Kepler Isaac Newton Telescope Survey (KIS), and the Everett KPNO (UBV) survey. The search interface allows users to find targets within the Kepler field of view (FOV) and allows searches on magnitudes, colors, and other parameters for both KIC and associated non-KIC targets.
This is the recommended interface for potential guest observers to locate possible targets for observation. GO proposers however should check on the target's position by either (or both) looking to one of our posted FFI images and seeing if it is on a chip, and (2) confirming this with the GO office.
