Kepler & K2
The science program and target lists for K2 Campaign 11 (Sep 24 - Dec 8) have now been posted on the approved targets & programs page.
The C11 target list includes 14,209 standard long cadence and 65 standard short cadence targets. The number of targets is lower than usual because it is a function of the spacecraft's on-board compression efficiency, which is low in the crowded Galactic Bulge field targeted by this Campaign.
We gained efficiency by tiling five globular clusters—M9, M19, NGC 6293, NGC 6355, and Terzan 5—which contained a high density of targets requested by multiple programs.
The latter three clusters will be observed using a circular aperture with 1.6' radius, whilst M9 was targeted using a 2' radius aperture, and M19 will be targeted using a 3'-by-5' rectangular aperture because it fell only partially on silicon.
Each cluster was tiled using a series of masks with the following ID ranges:
- 200126982–200127109 (M9)
- 200126870–200126870 (M19)
- 200127326–200127413 (NGC 6293)
- 200127414–200127501 (NGC 6355)
- 200128019–200128100 (Terzan 5)
The target list also includes 11 very bright stars (Kp magnitudes 3 to 6) for which we target only the central region of pixels using a circular aperture mask, excluding the long saturation bleed. Two of the bright stars are observed in short cadence (26 Oph & 36 Oph) and the others in long cadence. Their target IDs are:
- 200129034 (26 Oph)
- 200129035 (36 Oph)
- 200128906 (θ Oph)
- 200128907 (44 Oph)
- 200128908 (45 Oph)
- 200128909 (51 Oph)
- 200128910 (ο Oph)
- 200128911 (HR 6472)
- 200128912 (HR 6365)
- 200128913 (HR 6366)
- 200128914 (191 Oph)
Finally, we will also observe 55 Trojan asteroids, 7 Trans-Neptunian Objects, and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus. The trajectories of these moving bodies have been tiled using 1xn or nx1 pixel strips. The ID ranges for these objects are:
- 200107039–200128905 (Trojans)
- 200114742–200125326 (TNOs)
- 200128938–200129033 (Titan)
- 200124091–200124403 (Enceladus)
Note that this is the first campaign to be executed after the loss of CCD Module 4. Targets that were approved but would have fallen on this module were excluded from the target list. Only five programs lost more than 10% of their targets as a result, and no program lost more than 20%.