Spectra of nearby late K and M Kepler stars

We use these revised values to calibrate spectroscopic techniques to infer the fundamental parameters of more distant late-type dwarf stars. We demonstrate that, after masking out poorly modeled regions, the newest version of the PHOENIX atmosphere models accurately reproduce temperatures derived bolometrically.

We apply methods to late-type hosts of transiting planet candidates in the Kepler field, and calculate effective temperature, radius, mass, and luminosity with typical errors of 57K, 7%, 11%, and 13%, respectively. We find systematic offsets between our values and those from previous analyses of the same stars, which we attribute to differences in atmospheric models utilized for each study. We investigate which of the planets in this sample are likely to orbit in the circumstellar habitable zone.