K2 Information
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K2 Mission
The K2 mission continued Kepler's ground-breaking discoveries in the field of exoplanets and expanded its role into new and exciting astrophysical observations. On two reaction wheels, K2 was limited to pointing near the ecliptic plane, sequentially observing fields as it orbits the Sun. This observing strategy regularly brought new, well-characterized target fields into view, enabling observations of scientifically important objects across a wide range of galactic latitudes in both the northern and southern skies.
K2 performed a series of long, ecliptic-pointed campaigns to collect data for the astrophysical community that informed their understanding of planet formation processes, young stars, stellar activity, stellar structure and evolution, and extragalactic science. All K2 targets were proposed by the community through the Guest Observer Program.
The K2 mission ended operations on October 30, 2018, after the spacecraft ran out of fuel.
Note: As of March 20, all Kepler and K2 user support has been transitioned to the NASA Astrophysics archives.. For details, see the Kepler/K2 News and User Support page.
Exoplanet Archive K2 Resources
When K2 light curves or pipeline data products were made available by the project, they were ingested into the NASA Exoplanet Archive.
The archive provides an interactive table for all K2 targets, which, due to the size of the data set, requires an initial search. This result table can be sorted, filtered and downloaded for further analysis.
In addition to the columns in the EPIC catalog, the table indicates the campaigns in which the targets were observed. For Campaign 0 targets, we have matched 2MASS objects to the K2 targets using the same procedure as described in the EPIC catalog description.
| Interactive Tables (Also see: How to use interactive tables) | Documentation and Other Information | |
|---|---|---|
| K2 Targets |  Search interface to interactive table
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| K2 Planets and Candidates (known as K2 Candidates before November 2021) |
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 Data Column Definitions |
| K2 Confirmed Names (known as K2 Names before November 2021) |
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Data Column Definitions |
In addition, the Inventory service indicates whether an object or location has a K2 counterpart. |
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Campaign Data in the Archive
The following table lists which K2 campaigns have targets and/or project light curves in the Exoplanet Archive. EPIC sources that are targets in more than one K2 Campaign, e.g., in both C1 and C10, are under both campaigns.
| Targets | Light Curves | |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns | E (-1), 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 |
K2 Stellar Data
The stellar data from Huber et al. (2016) is also available in this ASCII file (35 MB).
K2 Naming/Numbering
Following the practice adopted during the Kepler prime mission and continued during the Kepler extended mission, confirmed planets with K2 data will receive a K2 designation with the format K2-1 b. For more information, see the K2 Numbers page.
Additional Mission Resources
Last updated: 3 November 2021
