AMPLITUDES OF SOLAR-LIKE OSCILLATIONS: CONSTRAINTS FROM RED GIANTS IN OPEN CLUSTERS OBSERVED BY KEPLER
- Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA), School of Physics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006 (Australia)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
- Department of Astronomy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208101, New Haven, CT 06520-8101 (United States)
- LESIA, CNRS, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Universite Denis Diderot, Observatoire de Paris, 92195 Meudon (France)
- Astronomical Institute 'Anton Pannekoek', University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 94249, 1090 GE Amsterdam (Netherlands)
- High Altitude Observatory, NCAR, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307 (United States)
- Laboratoire AIM, CEA/DSM-CNRS, Universite Paris 7 Diderot, IRFU/SAp, Centre de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C (Denmark)
- Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT (United Kingdom)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Instytut Astronomiczny Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego, ul. Kopernika 11, 51-622 Wroclaw (Poland)
- Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Konkoly Thege Miklos ut 15-17, H-1121 Budapest (Hungary)
Scaling relations that link asteroseismic quantities to global stellar properties are important for gaining understanding of the intricate physics that underpins stellar pulsations. The common notion that all stars in an open cluster have essentially the same distance, age, and initial composition implies that the stellar parameters can be measured to much higher precision than what is usually achievable for single stars. This makes clusters ideal for exploring the relation between the mode amplitude of solar-like oscillations and the global stellar properties. We have analyzed data obtained with NASA's Kepler space telescope to study solar-like oscillations in 100 red giant stars located in either of the three open clusters, NGC 6791, NGC 6819, and NGC 6811. By fitting the measured amplitudes to predictions from simple scaling relations that depend on luminosity, mass, and effective temperature, we find that the data cannot be described by any power of the luminosity-to-mass ratio as previously assumed. As a result we provide a new improved empirical relation which treats luminosity and mass separately. This relation turns out to also work remarkably well for main-sequence and subgiant stars. In addition, the measured amplitudes reveal the potential presence of a number of previously unknown unresolved binaries in the red clump in NGC 6791 and NGC 6819, pointing to an interesting new application for asteroseismology as a probe into the formation history of open clusters.
- OSTI ID:
- 21562489
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 737, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/737/1/L10; ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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DETECTION OF SOLAR-LIKE OSCILLATIONS FROM KEPLER PHOTOMETRY OF THE OPEN CLUSTER NGC 6819
New asteroseismic scaling relations based on the Hayashi track relation applied to red giant branch stars in NGC 6791 and NGC 6819