Saturday, February 19, 2011: 10:00 AM
146C (Washington Convention Center )
Our ability to "see" the interiors of other solar-type stars has now
taken a major step forward thanks to the NASA Kepler Mission, which,
in addition to its search for potentially habitable exoplanets, is
providing exquisite data for asteroseismology. Asteroseismology is the
study of the natural, resonant oscillations of stars. Here, we report
that the asteroseismic survey of solar-type stars undertaken by Kepler
has met with unprecedented success, yielding detections of solar-like
oscillations in ~500 stars. Distributions of the fundamental
properties of these stars show intriguing differences with predictions
from models of synthetic stellar populations in the Galaxy. This is a
big step forward for population studies, because we have robust
estimates of masses for all stars in the sample, and it puts us in a
position to test theories of stellar structure and evolution and to
constrain the physics of stars to levels that have so far not been
possible.
taken a major step forward thanks to the NASA Kepler Mission, which,
in addition to its search for potentially habitable exoplanets, is
providing exquisite data for asteroseismology. Asteroseismology is the
study of the natural, resonant oscillations of stars. Here, we report
that the asteroseismic survey of solar-type stars undertaken by Kepler
has met with unprecedented success, yielding detections of solar-like
oscillations in ~500 stars. Distributions of the fundamental
properties of these stars show intriguing differences with predictions
from models of synthetic stellar populations in the Galaxy. This is a
big step forward for population studies, because we have robust
estimates of masses for all stars in the sample, and it puts us in a
position to test theories of stellar structure and evolution and to
constrain the physics of stars to levels that have so far not been
possible.