One reported background component leaves the KIC 8164262 seasonal amplitude contrast nearly unchanged in Kepler Q1 to Q16

We test an additive background explanation for changes in the known strong oscillation of KIC 8164262. We fit the reported aperture background and stellar flux at the same fixed frequency in Kepler release 25 quarters 1 to 16. In the main fit, the background component in the stellar phase has a season contrast of 0.17 +/- 0.95 parts per million. Adding or removing one copy of the fitted background component changes the stellar contrast from 19.22 to 19.39 or 19.05 parts per million. Across four mask and baseline choices, the change stays below 0.85 parts per million. Thus, this measured component at unit scale does not explain the fitted contrast. This result does not exclude unreported background errors, larger scale factors, dilution, or other detector effects. The stellar contrast has large conditional errors in this fit. There is one telescope and no independent observation or new signal claim.

astronomy · Kepler · KIC 8164262 · background subtraction · tidal oscillations