A catalog of new eclipsing binaries in the Kepler database

In this thesis, we present a catalog of binary stars discovered in the publicly available Kepler database, none of which were included in previous such catalogs published by the Kepler science team. A brief review of other binary star catalogs is given, including the Prs̆a et al. catalog on which we are expanding. We detail the means by which the Kepler data were downloaded and reduced to produce light curves, and we explain the FFT selection algorithm and visual inspections which were used to find new candidates for binary systems. Finally, the classifications by which these candidates were sorted are explained in full, and the binary catalog itself is presented as Appendix A. In all, we found 173 new binary systems not listed in the Kepler team's binary catalog of 2,176 systems. We were also able to successfully find ~1,400 of the 2,074 binary stars which the Kepler team had identified and which were available in the public Kepler data release, thereby providing some indication of the efficiency of our search. Further appendices list RR Lyrae type stars found during the research and peculiar objects of interest which may merit further study.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Kotson, Michael Christopher

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Saul A. Rappaport.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78516

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/78516