Astronomy Seminar
| Date/Time: | Friday, 13 Mar 2015 at 4:10 pm |
|---|---|
| Location: | 38 Physics |
| Contact: | Steve Kawaler, Physics and Astronomy |
| Phone: | 515-294-5440 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Categories: | Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
The basis for the Kepler Mission's discoveries is extremely precise photometry over a long time, with high duty cycle, of over 100,000 stars. Designed to find planets, the data from Kepler also have revolutionized asteroseismology - a discipline that exploits subtle vibrations of stars to measure, or 'sound' their interior structure. Thousands of planetary candidates emerged through detection of rare extrasolar planet transit events. One key parameter in characterizing the planets is the planet's radius. Measuring the radius in turn requires precision determination of the radius of the host star. This is where asteroseismology provides a vital input into characterizing Kepler exoplanets - the same data that provide evidence for planets also can reveal stellar oscillations that can be exploited to determine, with precision, stellar properties such as mass and radius. In some cases we can also deduce other stellar properties such as the age of the host star. In this talk I'll discuss the remarkable strides that asteroseismology has been able to make using the remarkable archive of Kepler photometry, concentrating on examples where interesting properties of the planetary systems emerge once their stars are characterized.