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Esquerdo, Gilbert

Publications and source records attributed to Esquerdo, Gilbert.

Kepler Certified False Positive Table

This document describes the Kepler Certied False Positive table hosted at the Exoplanet Archive1, herein referred to as the CFP table. This table is the result of detailed examination by the Kepler False Positive Working Group (FPWG) of declared false positives in the Kepler Object of Interest (KOI) tables (see, for example, Batalha et al. (2012); Burke et al.(2014); Rowe et al. (2015); Mullally et al. (2015); Coughlin et al. (2015b)) at the Exoplanet Archive. A KOI is considered a false positive if it is not due to a planet orbiting the KOI's target star. The CFP table contains all KOIs in the Exoplanet Archive cumulative KOI table. The purpose of the CFP table is to provide a list of certified false positive KOIs. A KOI is certified as a false positive when, in the judgement of the FPWG, there is no plausible planetary interpretation of the observational evidence, which we summarize by saying that the evidence for a false positive is compelling. This certification process involves detailed examination using all available data for each KOI, establishing a high-reliability ground truth set. The CFP table can be used to estimate the reliability of, for example, the KOI tables which are created using only Kepler photometric data, so the disposition of individual KOIs may differ in the KOI and CFP tables. Follow-up observers may find the CFP table useful to avoid observing false positives.

Kepler↗

Discovery and Precise Characterization by the MEarth Project of LP 661-13, an Eclipsing Binary Consisting of Two Fully Convective Low-mass Stars

We report the detection of stellar eclipses in the LP 661-13 system. We present the discovery and characterization of this system, including high-resolution spectroscopic radial velocities and a photometric solution spanning two observing seasons. LP 661-13 is a low-mass binary system with an orbital period of 4.7043512{sub −0.0000010}{sup +0.0000013} days at a distance of 24.9 ± 1.3 parsecs. LP 661-13A is a 0.30795 ± 0.00084 M {sub ⊙} star, while LP 661-13B is a 0.19400 ± 0.00034 M {sub ⊙} star. The radius of each component is 0.3226 ± 0.0033 R {sub ⊙} and 0.2174 ± 0.0023 R {sub ⊙}, respectively. We detect out-of-eclipse modulations at a period slightly shorter than the orbital period, implying that at least one of the components is not rotating synchronously. We find that each component is slightly inflated compared to stellar models, and that this cannot be reconciled through age or metallicity effects. As a nearby eclipsing binary system, where both components are near or below the full-convection limit, LP 661-13 will be a valuable test of models for the structure of cool dwarf stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗