A DISTANT MIRROR: SOLAR OSCILLATIONS OBSERVED ON NEPTUNE BY THE KEPLER K 2 MISSION
- Department of Astronomy, New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 30001, MSC 4500, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 (United States)
- Institut de recherche sur les exoplanètes, iREx, Département de physique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7 (Canada)
- Sydney Institute for Astronomy (SIfA), School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006 (Australia)
- Center for Space Science, NYUAD Institute, New York University Abu Dhabi, P.O. Box 129188, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)
- Laboratoire AIM, CEA/DRF-CNRS, Université Paris 7 Diderot, IRFU/SAp, Centre de Saclay, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
- INAF—Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Via S. Sofia 78, I-95123 Catania (Italy)
- School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B152TT (United Kingdom)
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, E-38200 La Laguna, Tenerife (Spain)
- Center for Extrasolar Planetary Systems, Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut Street, Suite #205, Boulder, CO 80301 (United States)
- LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research University, CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Université Denis Diderot, F-92195 Meudon (France)
Starting in 2014 December, Kepler K 2 observed Neptune continuously for 49 days at a 1 minute cadence. The goals consisted of studying its atmospheric dynamics, detecting its global acoustic oscillations, and those of the Sun, which we report on here. We present the first indirect detection of solar oscillations in intensity measurements. Beyond the remarkable technical performance, it indicates how Kepler would see a star like the Sun. The result from the global asteroseismic approach, which consists of measuring the oscillation frequency at maximum amplitude ν {sub max} and the mean frequency separation between mode overtones Δ ν , is surprising as the ν {sub max} measured from Neptune photometry is larger than the accepted value. Compared to the usual reference ν {sub max,⊙} = 3100 μ Hz, the asteroseismic scaling relations therefore make the solar mass and radius appear larger by 13.8 ± 5.8% and 4.3 ± 1.9%, respectively. The higher ν {sub max} is caused by a combination of the value of ν {sub max,⊙}, being larger at the time of observations than the usual reference from SOHO /VIRGO/SPM data (3160 ± 10 μ Hz), and the noise level of the K 2 time series, being 10 times larger than VIRGO’s. The peak-bagging method provides more consistent results: despite a low signal-to-noise ratio (S/N), we model 10 overtones for degrees ℓ = 0, 1, 2. We compare the K 2 data with simultaneous SOHO /VIRGO/SPM photometry and BiSON velocity measurements. The individual frequencies, widths, and amplitudes mostly match those from VIRGO and BiSON within 1 σ, except for the few peaks with the lowest S/N.
- OSTI ID:
- 22654141
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 833, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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