QUARTER 2 PUBLIC DATA RELEASE

Observing Period: 20 Jun 2009 - 16 Sep 2009
Release Date: 02 Feb 2011

Fig 1: The Quarter 2 light curve of KIC 6541920, also designated Kepler 11. This system shows evidence for 6 transiting planets as described in Lissauer etal (2011). Gaps in the time series occur at the monthly downlinks, when the spacecraft is not taking data. This light curve has been processed through pipeline module PDC, in which systematic temporal trends were removed.

The Kepler mission has released the first full quarter of data taken by the spacecraft to the community. Quarter 2 contains photometry obtained during an 88-day period from 20 June to 16 September 2009. All Q2 data have been released except for some Q2 Guest Observer targets due for release in April 2011, in accordance with the 2009 Kepler NASA Research Announcement. Calibrated data for individual sources can be downloaded from the Multi-mission Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute Kepler archive using the Kepler Data Search and Retrieval form.

The Q2 data were reprocessed using Kepler Pipeline version 6.2 prior to archiving. Both the light curves and target pixels files are now available. The target pixel files contain the calibrated pixel images for each cadence observation, and permit the user to customize their light curves. Investigators must read the Release Notes #7 in order to understand the accuracy and limits of this specific data release. Also now available for greater understanding of the Kepler data is the Data Characteristics Handbook, which describes the phenomena found in the data by the Kepler Data Analysis Working Group.

The Q2 data contains light curves for 166,373 stars; most are late-type main sequence stars, brighter than 16th magnitude sampled with 30-minute cadence. On a 1-minute cadence 1417 stars were observed for 1 month, 5 for two months, and 70 for all three months during the quarter.

The motivation for this data release is to support the community in exploiting the 2011 NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP), a funding opportunity which supports the analysis and interpretation of data in the public archives. Scientists will have access to the Q0, Q1 and Q2 light curve data and approximately 30 full-frame images (FFIs) at the time that ADAP proposals are due on 13 May 2011.

New users of the MAST archive are requested to register before downloading data.

Please direct questions concerning the Q2 data to the .

BROWSE Q2 TARGETS

• Navigate your broswer to the Kepler Data Search and Retrieval Page.
• From the pull-down menu under 'User-specified field 1', choose 'Quarter', then enter "2" in the Field Description dialog box.
• Click on the search button.
• Custom searches can be executed by utilizing the other fields available on this page.

QUICK LINKS

• Data Release Notes #7
• Release Notes 7 supplementary material
• Kepler Data Characteristics Handbook
• Kepler Data Search and Retrieval form
• Search and Retrieval Form help page
• Kepler Archive Manual