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

TL;DR

This paper surveys M stars in Kepler data, identifying 108 M stars including 54 new ones, to facilitate planet searches around these common, small, and cool stars.

Contribution

The study introduces a new selection method for identifying M stars in Kepler data, discovering 54 previously unlisted M stars.

Findings

Identified 108 M stars in Kepler data.

Discovered 54 new M stars not previously targeted.

Provided a detailed selection process for M star identification.

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 Neptune-size 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 have been of particular interest for searching 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 space telescope. We have used four criteria, namely, the magnitude, proper motion, H-Ks and J-H colors, and searched for M stars in Q0 and Q1 data sets. We have been able to find 108 M stars among which 54 had not been previously identified among Kepler's targets. We discuss the details of our selection process and present the results.