ترغب بنشر مسار تعليمي؟ اضغط هنا

Testing the solar activity paradigm in the context of exoplanet transits

59   0   0.0 ( 0 )
 نشر من قبل Carolus Schrijver
 تاريخ النشر 2020
  مجال البحث فيزياء
والبحث باللغة English




اسأل ChatGPT حول البحث

Transits of exoplanets across cool stars contain blended information about structures on the stellar surface and about the planetary body and atmosphere. To advance understanding of how this information is entangled, a surface-flux transport code, based on observed properties of the Suns magnetic field, is used to simulate the appearance of hypothetical stellar photospheres from the visible near 4000 Angstrom to the near-IR at 1.6 micron, by mapping intensities characteristic of faculae and spots onto stellar disks. Stellar appearances are computed for a Sun-like star of solar activity up to a star with mean magnetic flux density ~30 times higher. Simulated transit signals for a Jupiter-class planet are compared with observations. This (1) suggests that the solar paradigm is consistent with observations for stars throughout the activity range explored provided that infrequent large active regions with fluxes up to $sim 3times 10^{23}$ Mx are included in the emergence spectrum, (2) quantitatively confirms that for such a model, faculae brighten relatively inactive stars while starspots dim more active stars, (3) suggests that large starspots inferred from transits of active stars are consistent with clusters of more compact spots seen in the model runs, (4) that wavelength-dependent transit-depth effects caused by stellar magnetic activity for the range of activity and the planetary diameter studied here can introduce apparent changes in the inferred exoplanetary radii across wavelengths from a few hundred to a few thousand kilometers, increasing with activity, and (5) that activity-modulated distortions of broadband stellar radiance across the visible to near-IR spectrum can reach several percent.



قيم البحث

اقرأ أيضاً

120 - Jose M. Fernandez 2009
We present photometry of six transits of the exoplanet XO-2b. By combining the light-curve analysis with theoretical isochrones to determine the stellar properties, we find the planetary radius to be 0.996 +0.031/-0.018 rjup and the planetary mass to be 0.565 +/- 0.054 mjup. These results are consistent with those reported previously, and are also consistent with theoretical models for gas giant planets. The mid-transit times are accurate to within 1 min and are consistent with a constant period. However, the period we derive differs by 2.5 sigma from the previously published period. More data are needed to tell whether the period is actually variable (as it would be in the presence of an additional body) or if the timing errors have been underestimated.
Stellar activity is the major roadblock on the path to finding true Earth-analogue planets with the Doppler technique. Thus, identifying new indicators that better trace magnetic activity (i.e. faculae and spots) is crucial to aid in disentangling th ese signals from that of a planets Doppler wobble. In this work, we investigate activity related features as seen in disk-integrated spectra from the HARPS-N solar telescope. We divide high-activity spectral echelle orders by low-activity master templates (as defined using both log RHK and images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, SDO), creating relative spectra. With resolved images of the surface of the Sun (via SDO), the faculae and spot filling factors can be calculated, giving a measure of activity independent of, and in addition to, log RHK. We find pseudo-emission (and pseudo-absorption) features in the relative spectra that are similar to those reported in our previous work on alpha Cen B. In alpha Cen B, the features are shown to correlate better to changes in faculae filling factor than spot filling factor. In this work we more confidently identify changes in faculae coverage of the visible hemisphere of the Sun as the source of features produced in the relative spectra. Finally, we produce trailed spectra to observe the RV component of the features, which show that the features move in a redward direction as one would expect when tracking active regions rotating on the surface of a star.
160 - Paul Robertson 2015
We present an in-depth analysis of stellar activity and its effects on radial velocity (RV) for the M2 dwarf GJ 176 based on spectra taken over 10 years from the High Resolution Spectrograph on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. These data are supplemented with spectra from previous observations with the HIRES and HARPS spectrographs, and V- and R-band photometry taken over 6 years at the Dyer and Fairborn observatories. Previous studies of GJ 176 revealed a super-Earth exoplanet in an 8.8-day orbit. However, the velocities of this star are also known to be contaminated by activity, particularly at the 39-day stellar rotation period. We have examined the magnetic activity of GJ 176 using the sodium I D lines, which have been shown to be a sensitive activity tracer in cool stars. In addition to rotational modulation, we see evidence of a long-term trend in our Na I D index, which may be part of a long-period activity cycle. The sodium index is well correlated with our RVs, and we show that this activity trend drives a corresponding slope in RV. Interestingly, the rotation signal remains in phase in photometry, but not in the spectral activity indicators. We interpret this phenomenon as the result of one or more large spot complexes or active regions which dominate the photometric variability, while the spectral indices are driven by the overall magnetic activity across the stellar surface. In light of these results, we discuss the potential for correcting activity signals in the RVs of M dwarfs.
We present a survey of far-ultraviolet (FUV; 1150 - 1450 Ang) emission line spectra from 71 planet-hosting and 33 non-planet-hosting F, G, K, and M dwarfs with the goals of characterizing their range of FUV activity levels, calibrating the FUV activi ty level to the 90 - 360 Ang extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) stellar flux, and investigating the potential for FUV emission lines to probe star-planet interactions (SPIs). We build this emission line sample from a combination of new and archival observations with the Hubble Space Telescope-COS and -STIS instruments, targeting the chromospheric and transition region emission lines of Si III, N V, C II, and Si IV. We find that the exoplanet host stars, on average, display factors of 5 - 10 lower UV activity levels compared with the non-planet hosting sample; this is explained by a combination of observational and astrophysical biases in the selection of stars for radial-velocity planet searches. We demonstrate that UV activity-rotation relation in the full F - M star sample is characterized by a power-law decline (with index $alpha$ ~ -1.1), starting at rotation periods >~3.5 days. Using N V or Si IV spectra and a knowledge of the stars bolometric flux, we present a new analytic relationship to estimate the intrinsic stellar EUV irradiance in the 90 - 360 Ang band with an accuracy of roughly a factor of ~2. Finally, we study the correlation between SPI strength and UV activity in the context of a principal component analysis that controls for the sample biases. We find that SPIs are not a statistically significant contributor to the observed UV activity levels.
We search for transits around all known pulsating {delta} Sct variables (6500 K < Teff < 10 000 K) in the long-cadence Kepler data after subtracting the pulsation signal through an automated routine. To achieve this, we devise a simple and computatio nally inexpensive method for distinguishing between low-frequency pulsations and transits in light curves. We find 3 new candidate transit events that were previously hidden behind the pulsations, but caution that they are likely to be false positive events. We also examined the Kepler Objects of Interest catalog and identify 13 additional host stars which show {delta} Sct pulsations. For each star in our sample, we use the non-detection of pulsation timing variations for a planet that is known to be transiting a {delta} Sct variable to obtain both an upper limit on the mass of the planet and the expected radial velocity semi-amplitude of the host star. Simple injection tests of our pipeline imply 100% recovery for planets of 0.5 RJup or greater. Extrapolating our number of Kepler {delta} Sct stars, we expect 12 detectable planets above 0.5 RJup in TESS. Our sample contains some of the hottest known transiting planets around evolved stars, and is the first complete sample of transits around {delta} Sct variables. We make available our code and pulsation-subtracted light curves to facilitate further analysis.
التعليقات
جاري جلب التعليقات جاري جلب التعليقات
سجل دخول لتتمكن من متابعة معايير البحث التي قمت باختيارها
mircosoft-partner

هل ترغب بارسال اشعارات عن اخر التحديثات في شمرا-اكاديميا