| 1. |
- Rauer, H., et al.
(författare)
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The PLATO 2.0 mission
- 2014
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Ingår i: Experimental astronomy. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0922-6435 .- 1572-9508. ; 38:1-2, s. 249-330
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA's M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary systems form and evolve? Are there other systems with planets like ours, including potentially habitable planets? The PLATO 2.0 instrument consists of 34 small aperture telescopes (32 with 25 s readout cadence and 2 with 2.5 s cadence) providing a wide field-of-view (2232 deg(2)) and a large photometric magnitude range (4-16 mag). It focuses on bright (4-11 mag) stars in wide fields to detect and characterize planets down to Earth-size by photometric transits, whose masses can then be determined by ground-based radial-velocity follow-up measurements. Asteroseismology will be performed for these bright stars to obtain highly accurate stellar parameters, including masses and ages. The combination of bright targets and asteroseismology results in high accuracy for the bulk planet parameters: 2 %, 4-10 % and 10 % for planet radii, masses and ages, respectively. The planned baseline observing strategy includes two long pointings (2-3 years) to detect and bulk characterize planets reaching into the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars and an additional step-and-stare phase to cover in total about 50 % of the sky. PLATO 2.0 will observe up to 1,000,000 stars and detect and characterize hundreds of small planets, and thousands of planets in the Neptune to gas giant regime out to the HZ. It will therefore provide the first large-scale catalogue of bulk characterized planets with accurate radii, masses, mean densities and ages. This catalogue will include terrestrial planets at intermediate orbital distances, where surface temperatures are moderate. Coverage of this parameter range with statistical numbers of bulk characterized planets is unique to PLATO 2.0. The PLATO 2.0 catalogue allows us to e. g.: - complete our knowledge of planet diversity for low-mass objects, - correlate the planet mean density-orbital distance distribution with predictions from planet formation theories,- constrain the influence of planet migration and scattering on the architecture of multiple systems, and - specify how planet and system parameters change with host star characteristics, such as type, metallicity and age. The catalogue will allow us to study planets and planetary systems at different evolutionary phases. It will further provide a census for small, low-mass planets. This will serve to identify objects which retained their primordial hydrogen atmosphere and in general the typical characteristics of planets in such a low-mass, low-density range. Planets detected by PLATO 2.0 will orbit bright stars and many of them will be targets for future atmosphere spectroscopy exploring their atmospheres. Furthermore, the mission has the potential to detect exomoons, planetary rings, binary and Trojan planets. The planetary science possible with PLATO 2.0 is complemented by its impact on stellar and galactic science via asteroseismology as well as light curves of all kinds of variable stars, together with observations of stellar clusters of different ages. This will allow us to improve stellar models and study stellar activity. A large number of well-known ages from red giant stars will probe the structure and evolution of our Galaxy. Asteroseismic ages of bright stars for different phases of stellar evolution allow calibrating stellar age-rotation relationships. Together with the results of ESA's Gaia mission, the results of PLATO 2.0 will provide a huge legacy to planetary, stellar and galactic science.
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| 2. |
- Miglio, A., et al.
(författare)
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PLATO as it is : A legacy mission for Galactic archaeology
- 2017
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Ingår i: Astronomical Notes - Astronomische Nachrichten. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 0004-6337 .- 1521-3994. ; 338:6, s. 644-661
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Deciphering the assembly history of the Milky Way is a formidable task, which becomes possible only if one can produce high-resolution chrono-chemo-kinematical maps of the Galaxy. Data from large-scale astrometric and spectroscopic surveys will soon provide us with a well-defined view of the current chemo-kinematical structure of the Milky Way, but it will only enable a blurred view on the temporal sequence that led to the present-day Galaxy. As demonstrated by the (ongoing) exploitation of data from the pioneering photometric missions CoRoT, Kepler, and K2, asteroseismology provides the way forward: solar-like oscillating giants are excellent evolutionary clocks thanks to the availability of seismic constraints on their mass and to the tight age-initial mass relation they adhere to. In this paper we identify five key outstanding questions relating to the formation and evolution of the Milky Way that will need precise and accurate ages for large samples of stars to be addressed, and we identify the requirements in terms of number of targets and the precision on the stellar properties that are needed to tackle such questions. By quantifying the asteroseismic yields expected from PLATO for red giant stars, we demonstrate that these requirements are within the capabilities of the current instrument design, provided that observations are sufficiently long to identify the evolutionary state and allow robust and precise determination of acoustic-mode frequencies. This will allow us to harvest data of sufficient quality to reach a 10% precision in age. This is a fundamental prerequisite to then reach the more ambitious goal of a similar level of accuracy, which will be possible only if we have at hand a careful appraisal of systematic uncertainties on age deriving from our limited understanding of stellar physics, a goal that conveniently falls within the main aims of PLATO's core science. We therefore strongly endorse PLATO's current design and proposed observational strategy, and conclude that PLATO, as it is, will be a legacy mission for Galactic archaeology.
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| 3. |
- Smiljanic, R., et al.
(författare)
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The Gaia-ESO Survey : properties of newly discovered Li-rich giants
- 2018
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 617
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aims. We report 20 new lithium-rich giants discovered within the Gaia-ESO Survey, including the first Li-rich giant with an evolutionary stage confirmed by CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) data. We present a detailed overview of the properties of these 20 stars. Methods. Atmospheric parameters and abundances were derived in model atmosphere analyses using medium-resolution GIRAFFE or high-resolution UVES (Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph) spectra. These results are part of the fifth internal data release of the Gaia-ESO Survey. The Li abundances were corrected for non-local thermodynamical equilibrium effects. Other stellar properties were investigated for additional peculiarities (the core of strong lines for signs of magnetic activity, infrared magnitudes, rotational velocities, chemical abundances, and Galactic velocities). We used Gaia DR2 parallaxes to estimate distances and luminosities. Results. The giants have A(Li) > 2.2 dex. The majority of them (14 of 20 stars) are in the CoRoT fields. Four giants are located in the field of three open clusters, but are not members. Two giants were observed in fields towards the Galactic bulge, but likely lie in the inner disc. One of the bulge field giants is super Li-rich with A(Li) = 4.0 dex. Conclusions. We identified one giant with infrared excess at 22 mu m. Two other giants, with large v sin i, might be Li-rich because of planet engulfment. Another giant is found to be barium enhanced and thus could have accreted material from a former asymptotic giant branch companion. Otherwise, in addition to the Li enrichment, the evolutionary stages are the only other connection between these new Li-rich giants. The CoRoT data confirm that one Li-rich giant is at the core-He burning stage. The other giants are concentrated in close proximity to the red giant branch luminosity bump, the core-He burning stages, or the early-asymptotic giant branch. This is very clear from the Gaia-based luminosities of the Li-rich giants. This is also seen when the CoRoT Li-rich giants are compared to a larger sample of 2252 giants observed in the CoRoT fields by the Gaia-ESO Survey, which are distributed throughout the red giant branch in the T-eff-log g diagram. These observations show that the evolutionary stage is a major factor for the Li enrichment in giants. Other processes, such as planet accretion, contribute at a smaller scale.
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| 4. |
- Abolfathi, Bela, et al.
(författare)
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The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey : First Spectroscopic Data from the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the Second Phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment
- 2018
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. - : IOP Publishing Ltd. - 0067-0049 .- 1538-4365. ; 235:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since 2014 July. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the 14th from SDSS overall (making this Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes the data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (2014-2016 July) public. Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey; the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data-driven machine-learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from the SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS web site (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020 and will be followed by SDSS-V.
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| 5. |
- Hrudkova, M., et al.
(författare)
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The discovery of a planetary candidate around the evolved low-mass Kepler giant star HD 175370
- 2017
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 464:1, s. 1018-1028
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on the discovery of a planetary companion candidate with a minimum mass M sin i = 4.6 +/- 1.0 M-Jupiter orbiting the K2 III giant star HD 175370 (KIC 007940959). This star was a target in our programme to search for planets around a sample of 95 giant stars observed with Kepler. This detection was made possible using precise stellar radial velocity measurements of HD 175370 taken over five years and four months using the coude echelle spectrograph of the 2-m Alfred Jensch Telescope and the fibre-fed echelle spectrograph High Efficiency and Resolution Mercator Echelle Spectrograph of the 1.2-m Mercator Telescope. Our radial velocity measurements reveal a periodic (349.5 +/- 4.5 d) variation with a semi-amplitude K = 133 +/- 25 ms(-1), superimposed on a long-term trend. A low-mass stellar companion with an orbital period of similar to 88 yr in a highly eccentric orbit and a planet in a Keplerian orbit with an eccentricity e = 0.22 are the most plausible explanation of the radial velocity variations. However, we cannot exclude the existence of stellar envelope pulsations as a cause for the low-amplitude radial velocity variations and only future continued monitoring of this system may answer this uncertainty. From Kepler photometry, we find that HD 175370 is most likely a low-mass red giant branch or asymptotic giant branch star.
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| 6. |
- Pinsonneault, Marc H., et al.
(författare)
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The Second APOKASC Catalog : The Empirical Approach
- 2018
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 0067-0049 .- 1538-4365. ; 239:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a catalog of stellar properties for a large sample of 6676 evolved stars with Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment spectroscopic parameters and Kepler asteroseismic data analyzed using five independent techniques. Our data include evolutionary state, surface gravity, mean density, mass, radius, age, and the spectroscopic and asteroseismic measurements used to derive them. We employ a new empirical approach for combining asteroseismic measurements from different methods, calibrating the inferred stellar parameters, and estimating uncertainties. With high statistical significance, we find that asteroseismic parameters inferred from the different pipelines have systematic offsets that are not removed by accounting for differences in their solar reference values. We include theoretically motivated corrections to the large frequency spacing (Av) scaling relation, and we calibrate the zero-point of the frequency of the maximum power (vmax) relation to be consistent with masses and radii for members of star clusters. For most targets, the parameters returned by different pipelines are in much better agreement than would be expected from the pipeline-predicted random errors, but 22% of them had at least one method not return a result and a much larger measurement dispersion. This supports the usage of multiple analysis techniques for asteroseismic stellar population studies. The measured dispersion in mass estimates for fundamental calibrators is consistent with our error model, which yields median random and systematic mass uncertainties for RGB stars of order 4%. Median random and systematic mass uncertainties are at the 9% and 8% level, respectively, for red clump stars.
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| 7. |
- Aguirre, V. Silva, et al.
(författare)
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Old Puzzle, New Insights: A Lithium-rich Giant Quietly Burning Helium in Its Core
- 2014
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal Letters. - 2041-8213. ; 784:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- About 1% of giant stars have been shown to have large surface Li abundances, which is unexpected according to standard stellar evolution models. Several scenarios for lithium production have been proposed, but it is still unclear why these Li-rich giants exist. A missing piece in this puzzle is the knowledge of the exact stage of evolution of these stars. Using low-and-high-resolution spectroscopic observations, we have undertaken a survey of lithium-rich giants in the Kepler field. In this Letter, we report the finding of the first confirmed Li-rich core-helium-burning giant, as revealed by asteroseismic analysis. The evolutionary timescales constrained by its mass suggest that Li production most likely took place through non-canonical mixing at the RGB tip, possibly during the helium flash.
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| 8. |
- Bedding, Timothy R., et al.
(författare)
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A multi-site campaign to measure solar-like oscillations in Procyon. II. mode frequencies
- 2010
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Ingår i: Astrophysical Journal. - 0004-637X .- 1538-4357. ; 713:2, s. 935-949
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have analyzed data from a multi-site campaign to observe oscillations in the F5 star Procyon. The data consist of high-precision velocities that we obtained over more than three weeks with 11 telescopes. A new method for adjusting the data weights allows us to suppress the sidelobes in the power spectrum. Stacking the power spectrum in a so-called echelle diagram reveals two clear ridges, which we identify with even and odd values of the angular degree (l = 0 and 2, and l = 1 and 3, respectively). We interpret a strong, narrow peak at 446 mu Hz that lies close to the l = 1 ridge as a mode with mixed character. We show that the frequencies of the ridge centroids and their separations are useful diagnostics for asteroseismology. In particular, variations in the large separation appear to indicate a glitch in the sound-speed profile at an acoustic depth of similar to 1000 s. We list frequencies for 55 modes extracted from the data spanning 20 radial orders, a range comparable to the best solar data, which will provide valuable constraints for theoretical models. A preliminary comparison with published models shows that the offset between observed and calculated frequencies for the radial modes is very different for Procyon than for the Sun and other cool stars. We find the mean lifetime of the modes in Procyon to be 1.29(-0.49)(+0.55) days, which is significantly shorter than the 2-4 days seen in the Sun.
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