439 research outputs found
SOAP 2.0: A tool to estimate the photometric and radial velocity variations induced by stellar spots and plages
This paper presents SOAP 2.0, a new version of the SOAP code that estimates
in a simple way the photometric and radial velocity variations induced by
active regions. The inhibition of the convective blueshift inside active
regions is considered, as well as the limb brightening effect of plages, a
quadratic limb darkening law, and a realistic spot and plage contrast ratio.
SOAP 2.0 shows that the activity-induced variation of plages is dominated by
the inhibition of the convective blueshift effect. For spots, this effect
becomes significant only for slow rotators. In addition, in the case of a major
active region dominating the activity-induced signal, the ratio between the
full width at half maximum (FWHM) and the RV peak-to-peak amplitudes of the
cross correlation function can be used to infer the type of active region
responsible for the signal for stars with \vsini\kms. A ratio smaller
than three implies a spot, while a larger ratio implies a plage. Using the
observation of HD189733, we show that SOAP 2.0 manages to reproduce the
activity variation as well as previous simulations when a spot is dominating
the activity-induced variation. In addition, SOAP 2.0 also reproduces the
activity variation induced by a plage on the slowly rotating star Cen
B, which is not possible using previous simulations. Following these results,
SOAP 2.0 can be used to estimate the signal induced by spots and plages, but
also to correct for it when a major active region is dominating the RV
variation.Comment: 28 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ after minor
revisions (taken into account in this version
SOAP. A tool for the fast computation of photometry and radial velocity induced by stellar spots
We define and put at the disposal of the community SOAP, Spot Oscillation And
Planet, a software tool that simulates the effect of stellar spots and plages
on radial velocimetry and photometry. This paper describes the tool release and
provides instructions for its use. We present detailed tests with previous
computations and real data to assess the code's performance and to validate its
suitability. We characterize the variations of the radial velocity, line
bisector, and photometric amplitude as a function of the main variables:
projected stellar rotational velocity, filling factor of the spot, resolution
of the spectrograph, linear limb-darkening coefficient, latitude of the spot,
and inclination of the star. Finally, we model the spot distributions on the
active stars HD166435, TW Hya and HD189733 which reproduces the observations.
We show that the software is remarkably fast allowing several evolutions in its
capabilities that could be performed to study the next challenges in the
exoplanetary field connected with the stellar variability.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in A&
Improvements on analytic modelling of stellar spots
In this work we present the solution of the stellar spot problem using the
Kelvin-Stokes theorem. Our result is applicable for any given location and
dimension of the spots on the stellar surface. We present explicitely the
result up to the second degree in the limb darkening law. This technique can be
used to calculate very efficiently mutual photometric effects produced by
eclipsing bodies occulting stellar spots and to construct complex spot shapes.Comment: Resubmitted to MNRAS after accounting for minor comments of second
review, 9 pages, 5 figures, software available at
http://eduscisoft.com/KSINT
On the long-term correlation between the flux in the Ca II H & K and Halpha lines for FGK stars
The re-emission in the cores of the Ca II H & K and H lines, are well
known proxies of stellar activity. However, these activity indices probe
different activity phenomena, the first being more sensitive to plage
variation, while the other one being more sensitive to filaments. In this paper
we study the long-term correlation between and , two indices based on the Ca II H & K and H lines
respectively, for a sample of 271 FGK stars using measurements obtained over a
9 year time span. Because stellar activity is one of the main obstacles
to the detection of low-mass and long-period planets, understanding further
this activity index correlation can give us some hints about the optimal target
to focus on, and ways to correct for these activity effects. We found a great
variety of long-term correlations between and . Around 20% of our sample has strong positive correlation between
the indices while about 3% show strong negative correlation. These fractions
are compatible with those found for the case of early-M dwarfs. Stars
exhibiting a positive correlation have a tendency to be more active when
compared to the median of the sample, while stars showing a negative
correlation are more present among higher metallicity stars. There is also a
tendency for the positively correlated stars to be more present among the
coolest stars, a result which is probably due to the activity level effect on
the correlation. Activity level and metallicity seem therefore to be playing a
role on the correlation between and . Possible
explanations based on the influence of filaments for the diversity in the
correlations between these indices are discussed in this paper.Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy
and Astrophysic
Consequences of spectrograph illumination for the accuracy of radial-velocimetry
For fiber-fed spectrographs with a stable external wavelength source,
scrambling properties of optical fibers and, homogeneity and stability of the
instrument illumination are important for the accuracy of radial-velocimetry.
Optical cylindric fibers are known to have good azimuthal scrambling. In
contrast, the radial one is not perfect. In order to improve the scrambling
ability of the fiber and to stabilize the illumination, optical double
scrambler are usually coupled to the fibers. Despite that, our experience on
SOPHIE and HARPS has lead to identified remaining radial-velocity limitations
due to the non-uniform illumination of the spectrograph. We conducted tests on
SOPHIE with telescope vignetting, seeing variation and centering errors on the
fiber entrance. We simulated the light path through the instrument in order to
explain the radial velocity variation obtained with our tests. We then
identified the illumination stability and uniformity has a critical point for
the extremely high-precision radial velocity instruments (ESPRESSO@VLT,
CODEX@E-ELT). Tests on square and octagonal section fibers are now under
development and SOPHIE will be used as a bench test to validate these new feed
optics.Comment: to appear in the Proceedings conference "New Technologies for Probing
the Diversity of Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets", Shanghai, 200
Modeling the RV jitter of early M dwarfs using tomographic imaging
In this paper we show how tomographic imaging (Zeeman Doppler Imaging, ZDI)
can be used to characterize stellar activity and magnetic field topologies,
ultimately allowing to filter out the radial velocity (RV) activity jitter of
M-dwarf moderate rotators. This work is based on spectropolarimetric
observations of a sample of five weakly-active early M-dwarfs (GJ 205, GJ 358,
GJ 410, GJ479, GJ 846) with HARPS-Pol and NARVAL. These stars have v sin i and
RV jitters in the range 1-2 km/s and 2.7-10.0 m/s rms respectively. Using a
modified version of ZDI applied to sets of phase-resolved Least-Squares- Decon-
volved (LSD) profiles of unpolarized spectral lines, we are able to
characterize the distribution of active regions at the stellar surfaces. We
find that darks spots cover less than 2% of the total surface of the stars of
our sample. Our technique is e cient at modeling the rotationally mod- ulated
component of the activity jitter, and succeeds at decreasing the amplitude of
this com- ponent by typical factors of 2-3 and up to 6 in optimal cases. From
the rotationally modulated time-series of circularly polarized spectra and with
ZDI, we also reconstruct the large-scale magnetic field topology. These fields
suggest that bi-stability of dynamo processes observed in active M dwarfs may
also be at work for moderately active M dwarfs. Comparing spot distributions
with field topologies suggest that dark spots causing activity jitter
concentrate at the magnetic pole and/or equator, to be confirmed with future
data on a larger sample.Comment: 34 pages, accepted for publication in MNRA
SOAP-T: A tool to study the light-curve and radial velocity of a system with a transiting planet and a rotating spotted star
We present an improved version of SOAP (Boisse et al. 2012) named "SOAP-T",
which can generate the radial velocity variations and light-curves for systems
consisting of a rotating spotted star with a transiting planet. This tool can
be used to study the anomalies inside transit light-curves and the
Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, to better constrain the orbital configuration and
properties of planetary systems and active zones of their host stars. Tests of
the code are presented to illustrate its performance and to validate its
capability when compared with analytical models and real data. Finally, we
apply SOAP-T to the active star, HAT-P-11, observed by the NASA Kepler space
telescope and use this system to discuss the capability of this tool in
analyzing light-curves for the cases where the transiting planet overlaps with
the star's spots.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysic
The first radial velocity measurements of a microlensing event: no evidence for the predicted binary
The gravitational microlensing technique allows the discovery of exoplanets
around stars distributed in the disk of the galaxy towards the bulge. However,
the alignment of two stars that led to the discovery is unique over the
timescale of a human life and cannot be re-observed. Moreover, the target host
is often very faint and located in a crowded region. These difficulties hamper
and often make impossible the follow-up of the target and study of its possible
companions. Gould et al. (2013) predicted the radial-velocity curve of a binary
system, OGLE-2011-BLG-0417, discovered and characterised from a microlensing
event by Shin et al. (2012). We used the UVES spectrograph mounted at the VLT,
ESO to derive precise radial-velocity measurements of OGLE-2011-BLG-0417. To
gather high-precision on faint targets of microlensing events, we proposed to
use the source star as a reference to measure the lens radial velocities. We
obtained ten radial velocities on the putative V=18 lens with a dispersion of
~100 m/s, spread over one year. Our measurements do not confirm the
microlensing prediction for this binary system. The most likely scenario is
that the assumed V=18 mag lens is actually a blend and not the primary lens
that is 2 magnitude fainter. Further observations and analyses are needed to
understand the microlensing observation and infer on the nature and
characteristics of the lens itself.Comment: submitted on 3rd June 2015 to A&ALette
SOPHIE+: First results of an octagonal-section fiber for high-precision radial velocity measurements
High-precision spectrographs play a key role in exoplanet searches and
Doppler asteroseismology using the radial velocity technique. The 1 m/s level
of precision requires very high stability and uniformity of the illumination of
the spectrograph. In fiber-fed spectrographs such as SOPHIE, the fiber-link
scrambling properties are one of the main conditions for high precision. To
significantly improve the radial velocity precision of the SOPHIE spectrograph,
which was limited to 5-6 m/s, we implemented a piece of octagonal-section fiber
in the fiber link. We present here the scientific validation of the upgrade of
this instrument, demonstrating a real improvement. The upgraded instrument,
renamed SOPHIE+, reaches radial velocity precision in the range of 1-2 m/s. It
is now fully efficient for the detection of low-mass exoplanets down to 5-10
Earth mass and for the identification of acoustic modes down to a few tens of
cm/s.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic
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