Background Short Period Kepler Eclipsing Binaries

TL;DR

This study identifies 547 new faint short period eclipsing binaries in Kepler data, mainly W UMa types, significantly expanding the known population and providing valuable data for stellar evolution studies.

Contribution

It presents a novel survey of background stars in Kepler data, discovering numerous previously unknown short period eclipsing binaries and analyzing their properties.

Findings

Discovered 547 new faint short period eclipsing binaries.

Most new binaries are W UMa type stars.

Background binaries are generally 4-5 magnitudes fainter than primary targets.

Abstract

During the primary Kepler mission, between 2009 and 2013, about 150,000 pre-selected targets were observed with a 29.42 minute-long cadence. However, a survey of background stars that fall within the field of view (FOV) of the downloaded apertures of the primary targets has revealed a number of interesting objects. In this paper we present the results of this search focusing on short period eclipsing binary (SPEB) stars in the background pixels of primary Kepler targets. We used Lomb-Scargle and Phase Dispersion Minimisation methods to reveal pixels that show significant periodicities, resulting in the identification of 547 previously unknown faint SPEBs, mostly W UMa type stars, and almost doubling the number of SPEBs in the original Kepler FOV. We prepared the light curves for scientific analysis and cross matched the pixel coordinates with Gaia and other catalogues to identify the possible sources. We have found that the mean of the brightness distribution of the new background SPEBs is approx. 4-5 magnitudes fainter than other, primary target eclipsing binaries in the Kepler Eclipsing Binary catalogue. The period distribution nonetheless follows the same trend but the spatial distribution appears to be different from that described by Kirk et al, 2016 for the catalogue eclipsing binaries.