The Derivation, Properties, and Value of Kepler’s Combined Differential Photometric Precision

2012/08/02 by Jessie L. Christiansen, Jon M. Jenkins, Douglas A. Caldwell +14 · 275 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate #Completeness (order theory) #Kepler #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Physics #Planet #Population #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Transit (satellite) #astro-ph.EP

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/668847

published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 124(922), 1279-1287 (Institute of Physics) · 24 pages, 12 figures, submitted to PASP

arxiv created 2012/08/02 · openalex publication_date 2012/11/15 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The Kepler Mission is searching for Earth-size planets orbiting solar-like stars by simultaneously observing >160,000 stars to detect sequences of transit events in the photometric light curves. The Combined Differential Photometric Precision (CDPP) is the metric that defines the ease with which these weak terrestrial transit signatures can be detected. An understanding of CDPP is invaluable for evaluating the completeness of the Kepler survey and inferring the underlying planet population. This paper describes how the Kepler CDPP is calculated, and introduces tables of rms CDPP on a per-target basis for 3-, 6-, and 12-hr transit durations, which are now available for all Kepler observations. Quarter 3 is the first typical set of observations at the nominal length and completeness for a quarter, from 2009 September 18 to 2009 December 16, and we examine the properties of the rms CDPP distribution for this data set. Finally, we describe how to employ CDPP to calculate target completeness, an important use case.

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