SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates

A. SANTERNE; C. MOUTOU; F. BOUCHY; G. HÉBRARD; M. DELEUIL; R. F. DÍAZ; A. S. BONOMO; J. M. ALMENARA

Nantes

Congreso; EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2011; 2011

As CoRoT, the Kepler space mission found a large amount of planetary transit candidates for which radial velocity follow-up is necessary in order to establish the planetary nature and then, to characterize the mass of the transiting companion. We are following up some interesting Kepler candidates with the SOPHIE spectrograph mounted at the 1.93-m telescope in Observatoire de Haute Provence (France). More than one year after the first Kepler release, we will present the strategy used to select the most promising Kepler candidates, within reach of a detection with SOPHIE, using the experience of more than 4 years of CoRoT, SWASP and HAT radial velocity follow-up. We will also highlight the results of the first year of observations that led to the discovery of several new transiting exoplanets and help the understanding of the false positive rate of the Kepler mission.