The Kepler IRIS Catalog: Image subtraction light curves for 9,150 stars in and around the open clusters NGC 6791 and NGC 6819

TL;DR

This paper presents the IRIS catalog, providing long cadence light curves for 9,150 stars in Kepler's superstamps of NGC 6791 and NGC 6819, including many previously unobserved stars, using image subtraction photometry.

Contribution

The paper introduces the IRIS pipeline and catalog, offering new light curves for thousands of stars in Kepler's superstamps, expanding data coverage and accessibility.

Findings

Catalog includes 8,427 previously unobserved stars.

Provides corrected light curves for all stars across multiple quarters.

Enhances data availability for stellar variability studies.

Abstract

The four-year Kepler mission collected long cadence images of the open clusters NGC 6791 and NGC 6819, known as "superstamps." Each superstamp region is a 200-pixel square that captures thousands of cluster members, plus foreground and background stars, of which only the brightest were targeted for long or short cadence photometry during the Kepler mission. Using image subtraction photometry, we have produced light curves for every object in the Kepler Input Catalog that falls on the superstamps. The IRIS catalog includes light curves for 9,150 stars, and contains a wealth of new data: 8,427 of these stars were not targeted at all by Kepler, and we have increased the number of available quarters of long cadence data for 382 stars. The catalog is available as a high-level science product on MAST, with both raw photometric data for each quarter and corrected light curves for all available quarters for each star. We also present an introduction to our implementation of image subtraction photometry and the open source IRIS pipeline, alongside an overview of the data products, systematics, and catalog statistics.