The Kepler Cluster Study: Planets and Gyrochronology

Abstract:

The precise time-domain observations from NASA's Kepler mission have lead to a breakthrough in the search for exoplanets in star clusters and have begun a new era in the study of stellar rotation. The Kepler Cluster Study (KeCS) was implemented as part of the Kepler mission to search for transiting exoplanets in open star clusters and to study the dependencies of stellar rotation on the most fundamental stellar properties - age and mass. In this talk I will motivate the two primary goals of KeCS, present our latest results, and discuss some of their implications for our understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary systems in star clusters, the angular momentum evolution of Sun-like stars, and for developing a new technique to determine stellar ages - gyrochronology.