Exploitation of Space Missions and New Technologies in Asteroseismology

Acordo FCT-CSIC 2010/11 (441.00 CSIC)

Investigador responsável
Ahmed Grigahcène

While stars are the fundamental components of the universe, they are also the laboratory where chemical elements are formed. So their understanding is indispensable for all astrophysical disciplines, while it also helps improve our understanding of physical laws and phenomena under extreme conditions. However, the main difficulty in studying stars is their distances from us and the impossibility to probe their interiors. Similarly to terrestrial seismology, asteroseismology, a new branch of astrophysics, makes use of the observed oscillation frequencies, providing a unique way to probe stellar interiors. This makes it possible to study stellar structure, evolution and physical processes at play in stars. Recently two space missions have been launched that will benefit asteroseismology: CoRoT (CNES, ESA) and Kepler (NASA). In these missions, both CAUP in Porto ana IAA in Granada teams are directly or indirectly participating. They have worked on the preparation of the missions and will participate in the data interpretation. The teams are complementary because they are experts in different variable stars types showing the same range of mass. The proposed project has the following objectives:

1.- The investigation of stars in their initial phase (pre-main sequence), from an observational and theoretical point of view.

2.- The study of stars in their main-sequence evolution phase constitutes a real challenge for theoreticians and permits probing at the same time stellar interiors (via g-modes) and superficial layers (via p-modes).

3.- The huge amount of data already received from CoRoT and data expected from Kepler need to be coordinated and a good collaboration is needed in order to have a better data exploitation.

4.- The strengthening of existing relationships between both teams, with the final objective of establishing a luso-spanish asteroseismology network for better efficiency, interchanging of expertise ans students, and mobility of researchers.

Portuguese Node: CAUP
Co-PI: Ahmed Grigahcene

Spanish Node: Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia
Co-PI: Pedro Jose Amado Gonzalez

Instituição financiadora
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Início: 1 janeiro 2010
Fim: 30 junho 2012