Kepler & K2
As some of you prepare your K2 Cycle 3 proposal target lists I wanted to alert you to an increase in the number of targets that we can observe with K2.
Our pointing has been significantly better than our conservative pointing assumptions we used when we built our pixel cost algorithms. The result of this is that we can observe about double the number of targets from Campaign 5 onwards compared with Campaign 4 and earlier. The increase is from about 15,000 total to around 30,000 total. Unfortunately, the telemetry data to determine that we were able to do this was no available in time for the K2 GO Cycle 2 proposal deadline.
How does this affect you? You may wish to consider submitting larger target lists than in previous cycles in any Cycle 3 proposals you are submitting. Now, as always there is a caveat here that you should not propose more target than you can justify but please be aware that the cost of a target is now lower.