150 new transiting planet candidates from Kepler Q1-Q6 data

Abstract

We have performed an extensive search for planet candidates in the publicly available Kepler long cadence data from quarters Q1 through Q6. The search method consists of initial detrending of the data, applying the trend filtering algorithm, searching for transit signals with the Box Least Squares fitting method in three frequency domains, visual inspection of the potential transit candidates and an in-depth analysis of the shortlisted candidates. In this paper we present 150 new periodic planet candidates and seven single transit events, 72 of which are in multiple systems. The periods of these planet candidates vary from ∼0.17 to ∼440 d. 124 of the planet candidates have radii smaller than 3 R⊕. We recover 82.5 per cent of the Batalha et al. Kepler Objects of Interest (KOI) catalogue. We also report 40 newly identified false positives – systems that look like transiting planets, but are probably due to blended eclipsing binaries. Our search improves the statistics in the short-period and small-planet radii parameter ranges.