PHOTOMETRIC VARIABILITY IN KEPLER TARGET STARS. II. AN OVERVIEW OF AMPLITUDE, PERIODICITY, AND ROTATION IN FIRST QUARTER DATA

By G. Basri, Lucianne M. Walkowicz, N. Batalha, R. Gilliland, Jon M. Jenkins, William J. Borucki, D. Koch, Douglas A. Caldwell, A. Dupree, D. Latham and 3 more. 2010

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We provide an overview of stellar variability in the first quarter data from the Kepler mission. The intent of this paper is to examine the entire sample of over 150,000 target stars for periodic behavior in their light curves and relate this to stellar characteristics. This data set constitutes an unprecedented study of stellar variability given its great precision and complete time coverage (with a half hour cadence). Because the full Kepler pipeline is not currently suitable for a study of stellar variability of this sort, we describe our procedures for treating the “raw” pipeline data. About half of the total sample exhibits convincing periodic variability up to two weeks, with amplitudes ranging from differential intensity changes of less than 10−4 up to more than 10%. K and M dwarfs have a greater fraction of period behavior than G dwarfs. The giants in the sample have distinctive quasi-periodic behavior, but are not periodic in the way we define it. Not all periodicities are due to rotation, and the most significant period is not necessarily the rotation period. We discuss properties of the light curves, and in particular look at a sample of very clearly periodic G dwarfs. It is clear that a large number of them do vary because of rotation and starspots, but it will take further analysis to fully exploit this.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b9ec23a40eae5172d80d58b20aa01229e7e73a61

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Citations in the corpus

THE APOKASC CATALOG: AN ASTEROSEISMIC AND SPECTROSCOPIC JOINT SURVEY OF TARGETS IN THE KEPLER FIELDS (2014, background): “Time-series data from Kepler can also measure the surface rotation rates of stars through starspot modulation of their light curves (Basri et al. 2011; Garćıa et al. 2014; McQuillan et al. 2014).”
LARGER PLANET RADII INFERRED FROM STELLAR “FLICKER” BRIGHTNESS VARIATIONS OF BRIGHT PLANET-HOST STARS (2014, background): “This diagram traces the evolution of Sun-like stars with three simple measures of their brightness variations (Basri et al. 2011): range (Rvar), number of zero crossings (X0), and root mean square (r.m.s.) on timescales shorter than 8 hours (8-hr “flicker” or F8; see Section 2.2).”
ROTATION PERIODS OF 34,030 KEPLER MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: THE FULL AUTOCORRELATION SAMPLE (2014, methodology): “We define this as a measure of the range between the 5th and 95th percentile of normalized flux, as described in Basri et al. (2011) and McQuillan et al. (2013a).”
KEPLER ECLIPSING BINARY STARS. II. 2165 ECLIPSING BINARIES IN THE SECOND DATA RELEASE (2011, background): “Other cross-checks have been performed, namely against the list of chromospherically active stars (Basri et al. 2011), Coughlin et al. (2010)’s list of low mass binaries, and a GO-reported list (Morrison et al. 2011), but neither new EB targets nor any conclusive non-EB stars have been found.”
STELLAR ROTATION PERIODS OF THE KEPLER OBJECTS OF INTEREST: A DEARTH OF CLOSE-IN PLANETS AROUND FAST ROTATORS (2013, background): “Kepler’s almost uninterrupted sub-mmag precision time series photometry allows for the derivation of precise orbital parameters from transit fitting, and stellar rotation measurements from star spot modulation (e.g. Basri et al. 2011; Meibom et al. 2011; Nielsen et al. 2013).”
Measuring the rotation period distribution of field M dwarfs with Kepler (2013, methodology): “To estimate the average amplitude of the periodic signal, we use a modified version of the range statistic Rvar defined by Basri et al. (2010, 2011) and McQuillan et al. (2012), which is the interval between the 5th and 95th percentiles of the light curve.”
Improved angular momentum evolution model for solar-like stars (2013, background): “Since mature solar-type stars appear to exhibit some spread in their rotation rate (Basri et al. 2011; Affer et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012), a relaxed boundary condition at the age of the Sun would possibly erase this subtle difference in the scaling of the braking law between models.”
Rotation and magnetism of Kepler pulsating solar-like stars : Towards asteroseismically calibrated age-rotation relations (2014, background): “Basri et al. (2011) also defined a photometric variability index, called the range, Rvar(tlen), to characterize the variability of the Kepler targets at different time scales.”
Rotation and differential rotation of active Kepler stars (2013, methodology): “9 we show rotation period P1 vs. range Rvar in a density plot.”
Rotation, differential rotation, and gyrochronology of active Kepler stars (2015, methodology): “In Reinhold et al. (2013) we analyzed ∼ 40,000 active stars with a variability range Rvar > 0.3 % (for definition see Basri et al. 2010, 2011), only using Q3 data.”