KELT: The Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope, a Survey for Exoplanets Transiting Bright, Hot Stars

Abstract

The KELT project was originally designed as a small-aperture, wide-field photometric survey that would be optimally sensitive to planets transiting bright (V~8-10) stars. This magnitude range corresponded to the gap between the faint magnitude limit where radial velocity surveys were complete, and the bright magnitude limit for transiting planet hosts routinely found by dedicated ground-based transit surveys. Malmquist bias and other factors have also led the KELT survey to focus on discovering planets transiting relatively hot host stars as well. To date, the survey has discovered 22 transiting hot Jupiters, including some of the brightest transiting planet host stars known to date. Over half of these planets transit rapidly-rotating stars with Teff > 6250 K, which had been largely eschewed by both radial velocity and transit surveys, due to the challenge of obtaining precision radial velocities for such stars. The KELT survey has developed a protocol and specialized software for confirming transiting planets around stars rotating as rapidly as ~200 km/s. This chapter reviews KELT planet discoveries, describes their scientific value, and also briefly discusses the non-exoplanet science produced by the KELT project, especially long-timescale phenomena and preparations for the TESS mission.