Sounding Stellar Interiors: Space-Based Asteroseismology with Kepler
| Date/Time: | Friday, 23 Oct 2009 from 4:10 pm to 5:10 pm |
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| Location: | 3 Physics Hall |
| Phone: | 515-294-2298 |
| Channel: | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
| Categories: | Lectures |
| Actions: | Download iCal/vCal | Email Reminder |
The development of our capacity for very high precision(micromagnitude) photometry over extended stretches of time (months to years) of a large number of stars has been fueled by the hunt for Earth-like planet transits of solar-type stars. This space-based observational capability is also ideally suited to the seismic sounding of stellar interiors: subtle variations in the brightness of stars can reveal global stellar oscillations. Thus missions such as NASA's Kepler, ESA's CoRoT, and CSA's MOST are providing asteroseismologists with data on thousands of stars that are orders-of-magnitude more sensitive than any efforts from the ground. In this talk, I will show how we are using the tools of asteroseismology to probe the depths of a variety of types of stars to make use of data from these missions, and how these investigations complement the planet-finding projects.