2017/12/06 by Knicole D. Colón, Steve B. Howell, Colón, Knicole D. +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.IM #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1712.02285
2 pages, Published by Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society
arxiv created 2017/12/06 · arxiv updated 2017/12/07
NASA's K2 mission began observing fields along the ecliptic plane in 2014. Each observing campaign lasts approximately 80 days, during which high-precision optical photometry of select astrophysical targets is collected by the Kepler spacecraft. Due to the 4 arcsec pixel scale of the Kepler photometer, significant blending between the observed targets can occur (especially in dense fields close to the Galactic plane). We undertook a program to use the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) on the 3.8 m United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope (UKIRT) to collect high-spatial-resolution near-infrared images of targets in select K2 campaign fields, which we report here. These 0.4 arcsec resolution K-band images offer the opportunity to perform a variety of science, including vetting exoplanet candidates by identifying nearby stars blended with the target star and estimating the size, color, and type of galaxies observed by K2.