IPAC Astronomy Lunch Seminar

Transiting planets orbiting the brightest stars offer the best follow-up opportunities from the ground and space. There currently exists a gap in our census of transiting Hot Jupiters orbiting stars with 8 < V < 10: these stars are fainter than the completeness limit of RV surveys, yet too bright to be monitored by existing transit surveys. With its small-aperture telescope and wide field-of-view, KELT-North was designed to partially fill in this critical gap by surveying 40% of the Northern sky for planets orbiting stars in this magnitude range. I will summarize the instrumentation, survey strategy, and data properties of KELT-North. I will then go on to describe our first detections, which include a short period, highly irradiated, and strongly inflated transiting brown dwarf.