No Arabic abstract
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 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.
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 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.
We have obtained single-phase near-infrared (NIR) magnitudes in the J- and K-bands for 77 RR Lyrae (RRL) stars in the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy. We have used different theoretical and empirical NIR period-luminosity-metallicity calibrations for RRL stars to derive their absolute magnitudes, and found a true, reddening-corrected distance modulus of 20.818 +/- 0.015 (statistical) +/- 0.116 (systematic) mag. This value is in excellent agreement with the results obtained within the Araucaria Project from the NIR photometry of red clump stars (20.858 +/- 0.013 mag), the tip of the red giant branch (20.84 +/- 0.04 +/- 0.14 mag), as well as with other independent distance determinations to this galaxy. The effect of metallicity and reddening is substantially reduced in the NIR domain, making this method a robust tool for accurate distance determination at the 5 percent level. This precision is expected to reach the level of 3 percent once the zero points of distance calibrations are refined thanks to the Gaia mission. NIR period-luminosity-metallicity relations of RRL stars are particularly useful for distance determinations to galaxies and globular clusters up to 300 kpc, that lack young standard candles, like Cepheids.