Beyond Exoplanets: Taking advantage of Kepler Object of Interest fields after the presence or absence of an exoplanet has been documented

Since the Kepler Mission made public its data on planet-candidates we have observed a few Objects of Interest -KOI- with our 0.9 m telescope at West Mountain Observatory to confirm or reject their nature as planets. Most of our chosen targets were found not to be planets. However, the data acquired need not be discarded since other bodies in the fields may present interesting light curves deserving of further investigation and study. This is the case for one of our KOI candidates, which turned out to be an eclipsing binary system. While performing differential photometry with stars in the field, I found a contact eclipsing binary that was not in the Kepler data base. In this poster I will present data on the new contact binary and discuss other interesting variable objects I have found in the Kepler field of view. This research was performed while participating in the Physics and Astronomy REU program at Brigham Young University during the summers of 2012 and 2013.