Steve Howell, a member of the Kepler Science team, is using the WIYN 3.5-meter and other telescopes on Kitt Peak to help evaluate planet candidates discovered by Kepler.  The Kepler mission has a follow-up team of approximately a dozen science team members (and their postdocs and students), which uses nearly an equal number of 1- to 3-m-class telescopes, funneling the best candidates to the HET and Keck for planet mass information. The work at Kitt Peak is a vital part of this effort.
	A 1-arcsec-square reconstructed Speckle image of a 13th magnitude star with its very close (0.13 arcsec) faint companion star (upper left).  This companion, likely here to be physically associated with the star, could be a brown dwarf in an ~55 AU orbit.  The speckle observations ruled the “transiting-planet” hypothesis for this star.
The goal of the NASA Kepler mission (launched in March 2009) is the discovery of Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their host stars.  Keplercontinuously collects photometric information with 2x10-5 relative errors for over 100,000 stars every 30 minutes, and every 60 seconds for a smaller set.  These data are cast as light curves and searched for exo-planet transit-like events.  However, simply spotting an event is not proof that planetary transit has caused it.  Seeing multiple transit events helps, but for complete confirmation that a real planet has been detected, a number of follow-up steps, including ground-based observations, are needed to rule out alternative explanations. The follow-up program (Gautier et al. 2010arXiv1001.0352G) is well orchestrated, with WIYN and the Speckle Imager playing major roles.  Howell and collaborators Elliott Horch (Southern Connecticut State University) and William Sherry (NOAO/NSO) are using the WIYN telescope to obtain Speckle images of Kepler exo-planet candidates.  The Kepler point spread function is quite large, so observations with higher angular resolution can uncover close variable-star companions that have blended with the Keplerobservations of the star.  The image shows an example of Kepler follow-up speckle-imaging reconstructions made from the WIYN observations.

  

The WIYN Telescope, a 3.5-meter instrument employing many technological breakthroughs, is the newest and second largest telescope on Kitt Peak. The WIYN Observatory (pronounced "win") is owned and operated by the WIYN Consortium, which consists of the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Yale University, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). Most of the capital costs of the observatory, which amounted to $14 million, were provided by these universities, while NOAO, which operates the other telescopes of the Kitt Peak National Observatory, provides most of the operating services. This partnership between public and private universities and NOAO is the first of its kind. The universities benefit from access to a well-run observatory at an excellent site, and the larger astronomical community served by NOAO benefits from the addition of this large, state-of-the-art telescope to Kitt Peak's array of telescopes.

More information on the WIYN Telescope can be found here.
  

Applying for Observing Time on WIYN

If you are an observer interested in applying for WIYN Telescope time through NOAO you must submit the standard KPNO Observing Proposal forms. Complete information about the NOAO WIYN Observing Program is available on the NOAO WIYN Observing Program Home Page.

The Universities use their time primarily for "classical" observing, but remote observing is also used. If you are a University observer and you have been granted time by your institution, you must submit an Observing Run Preparation (ORP) form prior to your observing run to make sure that we understand all of the equipment needs for your observing run.
  

Visitor Information

The WIYN 3.5m is not open to the public. However, the visitor's center does offer daily tours of other telescopes on Kitt Peak. For more information on visiting Kitt Peak National Obseratory see the Kitt Peak Visitor's Center web site.