Kepler Eclipsing Binary Stars. VIII. Identification of False Positive Eclipsing Binaries and Re-extraction of New Light Curves

TL;DR

This paper develops methods to identify false positive eclipsing binaries in Kepler data and re-extracts accurate light curves, adding 289 new binaries to the Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog.

Contribution

It introduces techniques for detecting false positives and re-extracting light curves, significantly expanding the catalog with 289 new eclipsing binaries.

Findings

Identified 289 new eclipsing binaries in Kepler data.

Developed methods to distinguish true binaries from false positives.

Enhanced the Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog with new data.

Abstract

The Kepler Mission has provided unprecedented, nearly continuous photometric data of $\sim$200,000 objects in the $\sim$105 deg$^{2}$ field of view from the beginning of science operations in May of 2009 until the loss of the second reaction wheel in May of 2013. The Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog contains information including but not limited to ephemerides, stellar parameters and analytical approximation fits for every known eclipsing binary system in the Kepler Field of View. Using Target Pixel level data collected from Kepler in conjunction with the Kepler Eclipsing Binary Catalog, we identify false positives among eclipsing binaries, i.e. targets that are not eclipsing binaries themselves, but are instead contaminated by eclipsing binary sources nearby on the sky and show eclipsing binary signatures in their light curves. We present methods for identifying these false positives and for extracting new light curves for the true source of the observed binary signal. For each source, we extract three separate light curves for each quarter of available data by optimizing the signal-to-noise ratio, the relative percent eclipse depth and the flux eclipse depth. We present 289 new eclipsing binaries in the Kepler Field of View that were not targets for observation, and these have been added to the Catalog. An online version of this Catalog with downloadable content and visualization tools is maintained at http://keplerEBs.villanova.edu.