The Kepler Satellite provides unique opportunities in stellar astrophysics, with its observations being of particular importance to the asteroseismology community. With Kepler having a limited target list due to data telemetry limitations, pre-launch time series and colour photometric surveys were undertaken to identify suitable targets for observation. However, none of these combined cadence and depth that matched that derived using Kepler itself. This meant that there were potentially many short period variable sources awaiting discovery which could be observed by Kepler. We therefore chose to initiate a deep, high cadence survey, RATS-Kepler, with a cadence of 1 minute and a depth of g 21 with the aim of recovering astrophysically interesting sources to potentially be observed by Kepler. The work presented here details my role in developing a new data reduction pipeline process, a new variable stars selection algorithm and the subsequent selection of sources for proposals for Kepler short cadence observations. I present the results of our survey, which have been made publicly available to maximise their scientific impact and the Kepler data obtained for the 18 sources which we successfully obtained short cadence observations. I then go on to outline the future of the Kepler mission now that it is unable to continue with its initial mission.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:634621 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Brooks, A. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1447063/ |
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