KITP: CoRoT and Kepler

Status of CoRoT and Kepler missions is reviewed at the "Exoplanets Rising" workshop at the Kavli Institute, we'll see if there are any news.

CoRoT is up first. Magali Deleuil presenting.
Kepler next with Bill Borucki.

CoRoT nominal mission ends tomorrow!
Extended missions to end of March 2013.
Some camera trouble on CoRoT - done 13 observing runs.
75,000 light curves from long (60 d) stares, 50,000 light curves from short (25 d) stares.
Lots of fun stars doing their funky stuff.
There will be a lot of CoRoT primary science, not just planet detections.
The astroseismologists are really having a good decade methinks, there will be some fundamental advances from that, what with MOST and Kepler also.

150 planetary candidates, 50 of which have transit depths less than 3 mmag (0.3%)

Interesting scatter of candidates at less than 1d to about 4d orbital period with transit depths of 1-3 mmag - these would sub-Neptunes mostly (depends on size of star of course - CoRoT can only get to this sensitivity with bright (< 14 mag) stars and short orbital periods (to build up signal)

Radial velocity confirmation using usual suspects, lots of HARPS time.
FIrst to reject contaminants, like binary blends, duh, then serious followups to try to find planet signature - as before knowing phase of orbit helps a lot.

Slides have good overview of individual confirmed CoRoT planets.
Diverse lot - usual bias to low density hot giants.

CoRoT 8, 10, 11 in prep to be submitted.
Interesting - especially #8 - teasing hints on slide.

Kepler is now up.
Only reveal preliminary results from first 43 days of observations.
300 planetary candidates, sounds like this will be repeat of AAS winter meeting announcement.

Yes, yes it was.
Some interesting hints in the discussions about upcoming things.
Need to listen between the lines.