The Kepler Pixel Project

Róbert Szabó

Although Kepler’s original mission is over, its photometry is so precise that new ways can be developed to harvest the great wealth of quasi-continuous data that has never been accessible from the ground. We have initiated a new program that we dub the Kepler Pixel Project in order to explore new approaches and to discover new pulsating stars and other time-variable objects. In this endeavour we examine individual pixels of the original Kepler mission to find interesting objects around the main Kepler targets. Specifically, we launched a project to discover background, faint RR Lyrae stars that are missing from the Kepler sample. In this contribution the first results of the Kepler Pixel Project are presented. We discuss the project, the search algorithms, and our findings. We also show other results and examples (flares, outbursts, new eclipsing binaries) to demonstrate the potential and future avenues of the project.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 6, 119-123 (2018)

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