Triple Stars Observed by Kepler

Abstract

The Kepler mission has provided high quality light curves for more than 2000 eclipsing binaries. Tertiary companions to these binaries can be detected if they transit one or both stars in the binary or if they perturb the binary enough to cause deviations in the observed times of the primary and secondary eclipses (in a few cases both effects are observed in the same eclipsing binary). From the study of eclipse timing variations, it is estimated that 15 to 20% of the Kepler eclipsing binaries have close-in tertiary companions. I will give an overview of recent results and discuss some specific systems of interest.