A Survey of M stars in the Field of View of Kepler Space Telescope

M. Oshagh, N. Haghighipour, N. C. Santos

Abstract.
M dwarfs constitute more than 70% of the stars in the solar neighborhood. They are cooler and smaller than sun-like stars, and have less-massive disks which suggests that planets around these stars are more likely to be of Neptune-sized or smaller. The transit depths and transit times of planets around M stars are large and well-matched to the Kepler temporal resolution. As a result, M stars are of particular interest for search for planets in both radial velocity and transit photometry surveys.
We have recently started a project on searching for possible planet-hosting M stars in the publicly available data from Kepler. We have used four criteria (namely, the period of observation, magnitude, proper motion, and H-Ks vs. J-H colors) to look for M stars in Q0 and Q1 data. We have found 101 M stars of which 27 are in both Q0 and Q1, and have studied their light curves. We will present the results of our analysis, and discuss their implications for the possibility of the existence of planets around these stars.

IAU Symposium 276
Torino, Italy
October 2010

Type: Poster