We present the method of the Extended Aperture Photometry (EAP) that we applied to K2 RR Lyrae stars. Our aim is to minimize the instrumental variations of attitude control maneuvers by using apertures that cover the positional changes in the field of view thus contain the stars during the whole observation. We present example light curves that we compared to the light curves from the K2 Systematics Correction (K2SC) pipeline applied to the automated Single Aperture Photometry (SAP) and to the Pre-search Data Conditioning Simple Aperture Photometry (PDCSAP) data.
The textit{Kepler} space telescope observed thousands of RR Lyrae stars in the K2 mission. In this paper we present our photometric solutions using extended apertures in order to conserve the flux of the stars to the highest possible extent. With this method we are able to avoid most of the problems that RR Lyrae light curves produced by other pipelines suffer from. For post-processing we apply the K2SC pipeline to our light curves. We provide the EAP (Extended Aperture Photometry) of 432 RR Lyrae stars observed in campaigns 3, 4, 5, and 6. We also provide subclass classifications based on Fourier parameters. We investigated in particular the presence of the Blazhko effect in the stars, and found it to be 44.7% among the RRab stars, in agreement with results from independent samples. We found that the amplitude and phase modulation in the Blazhko stars may behave rather differently, at least over the length of a K2 Campaign. We also identified four anomalous Cepheid candidates in the sample one of which is potentially the first Blazhko-modulated member of its class.
Light curves for RR Lyrae stars can be difficult to obtain properly in the K2 mission due to the similarities between the timescales of the observed physical phenomena and the instrumental signals appearing in the data. We developed a new photometric method called Extended Aperture Photometry (EAP), a key element of which is to extend the aperture to an optimal size to compensate for the motion of the telescope and to collect all available flux from the star before applying further corrections. We determined the extended apertures for individual stars by hand so far. Now we managed to automate the pipeline that we intend to use for the nearly four thousand RR Lyrae targets observed in the K2 mission. We present the outline of our pipeline and make some comparisons to other photometric solutions.
Thousands of RR Lyrae stars have been observed by the textit{Kepler} space telescope so far. We developed a photometric pipeline tailored to the light variations of these stars, called the Extended Aperture Photometry (EAP). We present the comparison of our photometric solutions for Campaigns 0 through 6 with the other pipelines available, e.g., SAP/PDCSAP, K2P2, EVEREST, and others. We focus on the problems caused by instrumental effects and the detectability of the low-amplitude additional modes.
The study of RR Lyrae stars has recently been invigorated thanks to the long, uninterrupted, ultra-precise time series data provided by the Kepler and CoRoT space telescopes. We give a brief overview of the new observational findings concentrating on the connection between period doubling and the Blazhko modulation, and the omnipresence of additional periodicities in all RR Lyrae subtypes, except for non-modulated RRab stars. Recent theoretical results demonstrate that if more than two modes are present in a nonlinear dynamical system such as a high-amplitude RR Lyrae star, the outcome is often an extremely intricate dynamical state. Thus, based on these discoveries, an underlying picture of complex dynamical interactions between modes is emerging which sheds new light on the century-old Blazhko-phenomenon, as well. New directions of theoretical efforts, like multi-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations, future space photometric missions and detailed spectroscopic investigations will pave the way towards a more complete understanding of the atmospheric and pulsation dynamics of these enigmatic touchstone objects.
New accurate and homogeneous optical UBVRI photometry has been obtained for variable stars in the Galactic globular $omega$ Cen (NGC 5139). We secured 8202 CCD images covering a time interval of 24 years and a sky area of 84x48 arcmin. The current data were complemented with data available in the literature and provided new, homogeneous pulsation parameters (mean magnitudes, luminosity amplitudes,periods) for 187 candidate $omega$ Cen RR Lyrae (RRLs). Among them we have 101 RRc (first overtone), 85 RRab (fundamental) and a single candidate RRd (double-mode) variables. Candidate Blazhko RRLs show periods and colors that are intermediate between RRc and RRab variables, suggesting that they are transitional objects. The comparison of the period distribution and of the Bailey diagram indicates that RRLs in $omega$ Cen show a long-period tail not present in typical Oosterhoff II (OoII) globulars. The RRLs in dwarf spheroidals and in ultra faint dwarfs have properties between Oosterhoff intermediate and OoII clusters. Metallicity plays a key role in shaping the above evidence. These findings do not support the hypothesis that $omega$ Cen is the core remnant of a spoiled dwarf galaxy. Using optical Period-Wesenheit relations that are reddening-free and minimally dependent on metallicity we find a mean distance to $omega$ Cen of 13.71$pm$0.08$pm$0.01 mag (semi-empirical and theoretical calibrations). Finally, we invert the I-band Period-Luminosity-Metallicity relation to estimate individual RRLs metal abundances. The metallicity distribution agrees quite well with spectroscopic and photometric metallicity estimates available in the literature.