We present a methodology for the determination of empirical masses of single stars through the combination of three direct observables with Gaia and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS): (i) ...the surface gravity via granulation-driven variations in the TESS light curve, (ii) the bolometric flux at Earth via the broadband spectral energy distribution, and (iii) the distance via the Gaia parallax. We demonstrate the method using 525 Kepler stars for which these measures are available in the literature, and show that the stellar masses can be measured with this method to a precision of ∼25%, limited by the surface-gravity precision of the granulation "flicker" method (∼0.1 dex) and by the parallax uncertainties (∼10% for the Kepler sample). We explore the impact of expected improvements in the surface gravity determinations-through the application of granulation background fitting and the use of recently published granulation-metallicity relations-and improvements in the parallaxes with the arrival of the Gaia second data release. We show that the application of this methodology to stars that will be observed by TESS should yield radii good to a few percent and masses good to 10%. Importantly, the method does not require the presence of an orbiting, eclipsing, or transiting body, nor does it require spatial resolution of the stellar surface. Thus, we can anticipate the determination of fundamental, accurate stellar radii and masses for hundreds of thousands of bright single stars-across the entire sky and spanning the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram-including those that will ultimately be found to host planets.
Main-sequence stars exhibit a clear rotation-activity relationship, in which rapidly rotating stars drive strong chromospheric/coronal ultraviolet and X-ray emission. While the vast majority of red ...giant stars are inactive, a few percent exhibit strong ultraviolet emission. Here we use a sample of 133 red giant stars observed by Sloan Digital Sky Survey APOGEE and Galaxy Evolution Explorer to demonstrate an empirical relationship between near-UV (NUV) excess and rotational velocity ( ). Beyond this simple relationship, we find that NUV excess also correlates with rotation period and with Rossby number in a manner that shares broadly similar trends to those found in M dwarfs, including activity saturation among rapid rotators. Our data also suggest that the most extremely rapidly rotating giants may exhibit so-called supersaturation, which could be caused by centrifugal stripping of these stars rotating at a high fraction of breakup speed. As an example application of our empirical rotation-activity relation, we demonstrate that the NUV emission observed from a recently reported system comprising a red giant with a black hole companion is fully consistent with arising from the rapidly rotating red giant in that system. Most fundamentally, our findings suggest a common origin of chromospheric activity in rotation and convection for cool stars from main sequence to red giant stages of evolution.
Dynamical Star-forming History of Per OB2 Kounkel, Marina; Deng, TingYan; Stassun, Keivan G.
The Astronomical journal,
08/2022, Volume:
164, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
We analyze the internal dynamics of young stars toward Perseus using Gaia EDR3 data, including Per OB2 and California Cloud. Interpreting the current dynamics, we speculate that Per OB2 may ...have formed from two separate clouds that have begun forming stars in close proximity to each other. IC 348 is caught in the middle between the two of them, inheriting kinematics of both, and it stands out as a possible site of cloud–cloud interaction. We also consider the possibility of a past supernova in Per OB2—while one has likely occurred, it does not appear to have caused any obvious triggered star formation, but it has created a shock that has swept the molecular gas away from IC 348. Finally, we examine a recently proposed shell between Taurus and Perseus. While its origin is unknown, we find no support for an expanding bubble in stellar kinematics, nor can we identify a likely progenitor for a supernova that may have caused it, disfavoring this scenario in the formation of this apparent shell.
Abstract We have assembled a sample of ∼8200 stars with spectral types F5V–M5V, all having directly measured X-ray luminosities from eROSITA and rotation periods from TESS and having empirically ...estimated ages via their membership in stellar clusters and groups identified in Gaia astrometry (ages 3–500 Myr). This is the largest such study sample yet assembled for the purpose of empirically constraining the evolution of rotationally driven stellar X-ray activity. We observe rotation–age–activity correlations that are qualitatively as expected: stars of a given spectral type spin down with age, and they become less X-ray active as they do so. We provide simple functional representations of these empirical relationships that predict X-ray luminosity from basic observables to within 0.3 dex. Interestingly, we find that the rotation–activity relationship is far simpler and more monotonic in form when expressed in terms of stellar angular momentum instead of rotation period. We discuss how this finding may relate to the long-established idea that rotation–activity relationships are mediated by stellar structure (e.g., convective turnover time, surface area). Finally, we provide an empirical relation that predicts stellar angular momentum from basic observables, without requiring a direct measurement of stellar rotation, to within 0.5 dex.
Surface gravity is a basic stellar property, but it is difficult to measure accurately, with typical uncertainties of 25 to 50 per cent if measured spectroscopically and 90 to 150 per cent if ...measured photometrically. Asteroseismology measures gravity with an uncertainty of about 2 per cent but is restricted to relatively small samples of bright stars, most of which are giants. The availability of high-precision measurements of brightness variations for more than 150,000 stars provides an opportunity to investigate whether the variations can be used to determine surface gravities. The Fourier power of granulation on a star's surface correlates physically with surface gravity: if brightness variations on timescales of hours arise from granulation, then such variations should correlate with surface gravity. Here we report an analysis of archival data that reveals an observational correlation between surface gravity and root mean squared brightness variations on timescales of less than eight hours for stars with temperatures of 4,500 to 6,750 kelvin, log surface gravities of 2.5 to 4.5 (cgs units) and overall brightness variations of less than three parts per thousand. A straightforward observation of optical brightness variations therefore allows a determination of the surface gravity with a precision of better than 25 per cent for inactive Sun-like stars at main-sequence to giant stages of evolution.
Full text
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DOBA, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Surface granulation can be predicted with the mass, metallicity, and frequency of maximum oscillation power of a star. Using the orders-of-magnitude larger Apache Point Observatory Galaxy Evolution ...Experiment-Kepler (APOGEE-Kepler) sample, we recalibrate the relationship fit by Corsaro et al. for "flicker," an easier-to-compute diagnostic of this granulation. We find that the relationship between the stellar parameters and flicker is significantly different for dwarf and subgiant stars than it is for red giants. We also confirm a dependence of flicker amplitude on metallicity as seen originally by Corsaro et al., although the dependence found here is somewhat weaker. Using the same APOGEE-Kepler sample, we demonstrate that spectroscopic measurements alone provide sufficient information to estimate the flicker amplitude to 7% for giants, and 20% for dwarfs and subgiants. We provide a relationship that depends on effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity, and calculate predicted flicker values for 129,000 stars with APOGEE spectra. Finally, we use published relationships between flicker and radial velocity jitter to estimate minimum jitter values for these same 129,000 stars, and we identify stars whose total jitter is likely to be even larger than the granulation-driven jitter by virtue of large-amplitude photometric variability.
We present high-resolution ALMA Band 6 and 7 observations of the tidally disrupted protoplanetary disks of the RW Aurigae binary. Our observations reveal tidal streams in addition to the previously ...observed tidal arm around RW Aur A. The observed configuration of tidal streams surrounding RW Aur A and B is incompatible with a single star-disk tidal encounter, suggesting that the RW Aurigae system has undergone multiple flyby interactions. We also resolve the circumstellar disks around RW Aur A and B, with CO radii of 58 au and 38 au consistent with tidal truncation, and 2.5 times smaller dust emission radii. The disks appear misaligned by 12° or 57°. Using new photometric observations from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) archives, we have also identified an additional dimming event of the primary that began in late 2017 and is currently ongoing. With over a century of photometric observations, we are beginning to explore the same spatial scales as ALMA.
ABSTRACT In our previous work we found that high-quality light curves, such as those obtained by Kepler, may be used to measure stellar surface gravity via granulation-driven light curve "flicker" ...(F8). Here, we update and extend the relation originally presented by Bastien et al. in 2013 after calibrating F8 against a more robust set of asteroseismically derived surface gravities. We describe in detail how we extract the F8 signal from the light curves, including how we treat phenomena, such as exoplanet transits and shot noise, that adversely affect the measurement of F8. We examine the limitations of the technique, and, as a result, we now provide an updated treatment of the F8-based error. We briefly highlight further applications of the technique, such as astrodensity profiling or its use in other types of stars with convective outer layers. We discuss potential uses in current and upcoming space-based photometric missions. Finally, we supply F8-based values, and their uncertainties, for 27,628 Kepler stars not identified as hosts of transiting planets, with 4500 K < Teff < 7150 K, 2.5 < < 4.6, Kp ≤ 13.5, and overall photometric amplitudes <10 parts per thousand.
Radius inflation continues to be explored as a peculiar occurrence among magnetically active, low-mass stars. Recently, Somers & Stassun showed that radius inflation among low-mass stars in the young ...open cluster M45 (Pleiades Cluster) is correlated to the rotation rate: faster rotators are more inflated. Here we extend that work to a sample of 68 stars of the older open Hyades Cluster. We derive the stars' spectral energy distributions to measure their bolometric fluxes. With spectroscopically defined Teff and Gaia distances we calculate stellar radii using the Stefan-Boltzmann relation. We find numerous stars that exhibit significant (3-4 ) radius inflation relative to a nominal cluster isochrone. We compare these results to that of the younger Pleiades and consider radius inflation as a function of open cluster evolution. We find that unlike the Pleiades, there is not a statistically significant correlation between radius inflation and stellar rotation period. However, we do find that most inflated stars have (rapid) rotational Rossby numbers of 0.1-0.2, such that the correlation of radius inflation with Rossby number is statistically significant at 99.98% confidence. Because the canonical rotation-activity relation of low-mass stars is understood to result from the connection between magnetic activity and surface convection, our results imply that magnetic activity within the convective layers of low-mass stars is what preferentially drives radius inflation.
Abstract
We use TESS full-frame imaging data to investigate the angular momentum evolution of young stars in the Orion Complex. We confirm recent findings that stars with rotation periods faster than ...2 days are overwhelmingly binaries, with typical separations of tens of au; such binaries quickly clear their disks, leading to a tendency for rapid rotators to be diskless. Among (nominally single) stars with rotation periods slower than 2 days, we observe the familiar gyrochronological horseshoe-shaped relationship of rotation period versus
T
eff
, indicating that the processes that govern the universal evolution of stellar rotation on gigayear timescales are already in place within the first few megayears. Using spectroscopic
v
sin
i
, we determine the distribution of
sin
i
, revealing that the youngest stars are biased toward more pole-on orientations, which may be responsible for the systematics between stellar mass and age observed in star-forming regions. We are also able for the first time to make empirical, quantitative measurements of angular momenta and their time derivatives as functions of stellar mass and age, finding these relationships to be much simpler and monotonic as compared to the complex relationships involving rotation period alone; evidently, the relationship between rotation period and
T
eff
is largely a reflection of mass-dependent stellar structure and not of angular momentum per se. Our measurements show that the stars experience spin-down torques in the range of ∼10
37
erg at ∼1 Myr to ∼10
35
erg at ∼10 Myr, which provide a crucial empirical touchstone for theoretical mechanisms of angular momentum loss in young stars.
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