2 research outputs found
A search for technosignatures from 14 planetary systems in the Kepler field with the Green Bank Telescope at 1.15-1.73 GHz
Analysis of Kepler mission data suggests that the Milky Way includes billions
of Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of their host star. Current
technology enables the detection of technosignatures emitted from a large
fraction of the Galaxy. We describe a search for technosignatures that is
sensitive to Arecibo-class transmitters located within ~420 ly of Earth and
transmitters that are 1000 times more effective than Arecibo within ~13 000 ly
of Earth. Our observations focused on 14 planetary systems in the Kepler field
and used the L-band receiver (1.15-1.73 GHz) of the 100 m diameter Green Bank
Telescope. Each source was observed for a total integration time of 5 minutes.
We obtained power spectra at a frequency resolution of 3 Hz and examined
narrowband signals with Doppler drift rates between +/-9 Hz/s. We flagged any
detection with a signal-to-noise ratio in excess of 10 as a candidate signal
and identified approximately 850 000 candidates. Most (99%) of these candidate
signals were automatically classified as human-generated radio-frequency
interference (RFI). A large fraction (>99%) of the remaining candidate signals
were also flagged as anthropogenic RFI because they have frequencies that
overlap those used by global navigation satellite systems, satellite downlinks,
or other interferers detected in heavily polluted regions of the spectrum. All
19 remaining candidate signals were scrutinized and none were attributable to
an extraterrestrial source.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa