Bibcode
Stello, Dennis; Chaplin, William J.; Bruntt, Hans; Creevey, Orlagh L.; García-Hernández, Antonio; Monteiro, Mario J. P. F. G.; Moya, Andrés; Quirion, Pierre-Olivier; Sousa, Sergio G.; Suárez, Juan-Carlos; Appourchaux, Thierry; Arentoft, Torben; Ballot, Jerome; Bedding, Timothy R.; Christensen-Dalsgaard, Jørgen; Elsworth, Yvonne; Fletcher, Stephen T.; García, Rafael A.; Houdek, Günter; Jiménez-Reyes, Sebastian J.; Kjeldsen, Hans; New, Roger; Régulo, Clara; Salabert, David; Toutain, Thierry
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 700, Issue 2, pp. 1589-1602 (2009).
Advertised on:
8
2009
Journal
Citations
165
Refereed citations
139
Description
For distant stars, as observed by the NASA Kepler satellite, parallax
information is currently of fairly low quality and is not complete. This
limits the precision with which the absolute sizes of the stars and
their potential transiting planets can be determined by traditional
methods. Asteroseismology will be used to aid the radius determination
of stars observed during NASA's Kepler mission. We report on the recent
asteroFLAG hare-and-hounds Exercise#2, where a group of "hares"
simulated data of F-K main-sequence stars that a group of "hounds"
sought to analyze, aimed at determining the stellar radii. We
investigated stars in the range 9 < V < 15, both with and without
parallaxes. We further test different uncertainties in T eff,
and compare results with and without using asteroseismic constraints.
Based on the asteroseismic large frequency spacing, obtained from
simulations of 4 yr time series data from the Kepler mission, we
demonstrate that the stellar radii can be correctly and precisely
determined, when combined with traditional stellar parameters from the
Kepler Input Catalogue. The radii found by the various methods used by
each independent hound generally agree with the true values of the
artificial stars to within 3%, when the large frequency spacing is used.
This is 5-10 times better than the results where seismology is not
applied. These results give strong confidence that radius estimation can
be performed to better than 3% for solar-like stars using automatic
pipeline reduction. Even when the stellar distance and luminosity are
unknown we can obtain the same level of agreement. Given the
uncertainties used for this exercise we find that the input log g and
parallax do not help to constrain the radius, and that T eff
and metallicity are the only parameters we need in addition to the large
frequency spacing. It is the uncertainty in the metallicity that
dominates the uncertainty in the radius.
Related projects
Helio and Astero-Seismology and Exoplanets Search
The principal objectives of this project are: 1) to study the structure and dynamics of the solar interior, 2) to extend this study to other stars, 3) to search for extrasolar planets using photometric methods (primarily by transits of their host stars) and their characterization (using radial velocity information) and 4) the study of the planetary
Savita
Mathur