Monday, July 1 - Session 1 - 10:10

Space and ground based data for Asteroseismology

Hans Kjeldsen1,2
1 Teoretisk Astrofysik Center, Danmarks Grundforskningsfond, hans@ifa.au.dk
2Institut for Fysik og Astronomi, Aarhus Universitet, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

 

Oscillation frequencies are the most accurate properties one can measure for a star, potentially - through asteroseismology - allowing detailed tests of stellar models and evolution theories. This potentially very promising tool has motivated a huge observational effort with the aim of doing asteroseismology in a similar way as helioseismology is used to study details of the solar interior. However, unlike asteroseismology, helioseismology is founded on an immense amount of high-quality data supported by detailed state-of-the-art models. It is difficult to imagine that asteroseismology will ever reach a level similar to that in which we find helioseismology today. The reasons for this lie mainly in the differences between the data quality for the two subjects. The quality of ground based asteroseismic data is limited by atmospheric and instrumental effects as well as by technological limits in the observing techniques. However, the future of asterosiesmology is in space. Space missions allow one to perform wide-band photometry with high accuracy because of the absence of scintillation (fluctuations in stellar light caused by the Earth's atmosphere). Even a small space-based telescope will do much better than even the largest ground-based telescopes. In the present talk I intend to discuss the current state of asteroseismological data and review the future possibilities of ground based observations as well as the upcoming space missions such as MOST, MONS, COROT and Eddington (ESA). I intend to concentrate on evaluating data quality and relate this to the properties we try to determine.

 
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