The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 in an effort to identify exoplanets using the transit method. This method was very fruitful, and hundreds of possible planets were discovered. At the same time, many objects the Kepler autovetter was confident were real exoplanets were actually not. These were "false positives", or objects that the autovetting system wrongly classified as exoplanets. On the other hand, many objects that the autovetter classified as false positives were actually real exoplanets. Because of this, the Kepler False Positive Working Group (FPWG) was created to look at each false positive and determine whether or not it was actually an exoplanet, or whether it was indeed a false positive.

THE WHAT - THE WHY - THE HOW

This project aims to analyze the false positive predictions made by the Kepler autovetting system in order to identify possible patterns. The end goal is to identify certain unknown factors to take into account when designing the next autovetting system in order to more accurately seperate real false positives from incorrect false positives.

This work is ultimately intended to improve our methods of identifying and analyzing exoplanets automatically in order to further decrease the amount of work that needs to be done by humans. This will improve our capability to quickly identify large amounts of exoplanets with minimal corrections needed.