#asteroseismology — Public Fediverse posts

I mentioned Gaia DR4 as my most anticipated #astronomy event this year but this Nature Astronomy editorial made me aware that CubeSpec and TOLIMAN are due to launch. I can't now found details about what data TOLIMAN will report but I'm hoping its something we can use for #asteroseismology. Both α Cen A and B are known to be solar-like oscillators.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02779-9

New in the #VirtualObservatory: “Variability of magnetic hot stars from TESS obs.” by Shen D.-X. et al.
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/955/123
#VisibleAstronomy #EffectiveTemperature #Asteroseismology #MagneticFields

Glad to see a descendent of another stellar evolution code that I once used putting out a fresh instrument paper (of a series to be?):

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02801

I've always found Cesam2k20 particularly interesting because I think it has the most advanced treatment (among 1D codes) of rotation, and because it possibly uniquely uses a collocation method to solve the spatial equations.

Find out more about the code at their website:

https://www.ias.u-psud.fr/cesam2k20/

#astronomy #asteroseismology

For #asteroseismology, Kepler's sensitivity and observing duration is unparalleled. TESS has been exciting for otherwise-interesting bright stars but I've felt K2 was neglected. The 90d baseline is valuable but the systematics gnarly. So I'm delighted to see Hookway et al.'s (2025) analysis of solar-like oscillators in the K2 "KEYSTONE" sample.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21626

Here's an example power spectrum for a late subgiant, where the symbols indicate individual oscillation modes. 🤩

#astronomy

It's still #TESStuesday! And today's there's some neat #asteroseismology.

You may have heard of the "Methusaleh star", which is very old but I honestly don't think was ever a challenge to the accepted age of the Universe. But this study of the oscillations based on TESS data is nevertheless interesting because it's very poor in metals relative to other asteroseismic targets, and shows that our rough rules for oscillation properties seem to deviate at low metallicity.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11532

I might incur 13.7 days of bad luck for sharing a non-TESS light curve on #TESStuesday but this multi-band light curve from the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory's commissioning data is too good. 🤩

This is a distant (16.6kpc), faint (18th magnitude) SX Phe variable but the light curve has the unmistakable shape (in the optical g band) of a δ Sct/SX Phe variable.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/adeab0

#astronomy #astrodon #asteroseismology

NASA's TESS satellite serendipitously observed the 2019 eclipse of γ Per and I'm delighted to see it got some attention in a poster by László Molnár, Rozália Ádám and collaborators at this year's KASC15/TASC8 conference (basically the biggest annual #asteroseismology conference):

https://zenodo.org/records/13641744

#astronomy

(The imaged light curve is my own but in essence the same as one in the poster.)

This #TESStuesday, I offer the eclipsing binary TY Pyx. Nothing at all made me think "I don't think I've ever looked at variables in Pyxis", so I grabbed something at random from the GCVS. So here it is, with very spotty out-of-eclipse variations also make it an RS CVn variable. Spectral type is G5IV+G5IV so I tried my hand at finding solar-like oscillations but I didn't find anything (though I didn't try *that* hard).

#asteroseismology

I just learned that a recording of this year's Crafoord Prize Symposium in #Astronomy, which happened on Wednesday, is available online. This year's laureates are Douglas Gough, Jørgen Christensen-Dalsgaard (aka JCD) and Conny Aerts, for developing helio- and #asteroseismology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMwMsHj0K1U

You can find the programme here:

https://www.kva.se/en/event/the-crafoord-prize-symposium-in-astronomy-2024-2/

Big thanks to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for making this available so promptly!

For #TESStuesday, I recently came across Tobin et al.'s discovery of a substellar companion around the γ Dor variable HIP 39017 (= V769 Mon). The TESS light curve (some of Sector 7 shown) does *not* disappoint.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04000

#asteroseismology

In Nature yesterday:

"Smallest known starquakes are detected with a subtle shift of colour: An unusual technique picks up the slow vibration of a faint star."

"Unusual"? I guess in a very specific sense it's not wrong to call a radial-velocity detection of solar-like oscillations "unusual" but I feel like it betrays that RVs are

(a) how we measure solar oscillations and
(b) how solar-like oscillations were first detected.

#astronomy #asteroseismology

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00965-1

Expanding the frontiers of cool-dwarf #asteroseismology with ESPRESSO - detection of solar-like oscillations in the K5 dwarf ϵ Indi: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/03/aa49197-24/aa49197-24.html -> Tiniest ‘starquake’ ever detected: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2024/tiniest-starquake-ever-detected-new-study - an orange dwarf star has yielded the tiniest ‘starquakes’ ever recorded, measured by an international team of scientists.

Advancements in Asteroseismology Explain Red Clump Stars' Pulsations https://researchinenglish.com/article/2024.3/advancements-in-asteroseismology-explain-red-clump-mfgpjotl?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#astrophysics #science #research #modelling #stars #asteroseismology

For #TESStuesday, I bring the rapidly-oscillating peculiar A (roAp) star γ Equ, whose pulsations I didn't know about until I saw this paper by Järvinen et al. in which they study the magnetic splitting (Zeeman effect) in its spectrum.

The TESS amplitude spectrum (data in Sector 55) is a textbook roAp star, with a strong peak at a period of ~116 c/d = a period of ~12.5 minutes.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.16966

#asteroseismology

I only learned today that Wasaburo Unno died two months ago (Nov 7, 2023). Apparently he's best known for a formula (the Unno—Rachkovsky formula) for deriving magnetic field strengths from polarimetry, but I expect everyone in #helioseismology or #asteroseismology will know him for his famous textbooks on non-radial stellar pulsations.

You can learn more about him from his obituary in Solar Physics:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-023-02238-y

#TESStuesday is not forgotten! On arXiv today, Sepulveda et al. show amplitude spectra from TESS of the definitely-δ-Sct-variable HIP 65426 (HD 116434), whose orbiting planet was the to be imaged by JWST (Carter et al., 2023). It rotates crazy fast (jargon, sorry): vsini ≈ 280 km/s, rotation period ~7.3h so the echelle diagram lacks any patterns that we recognise (yet?).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.05310

#asteroseismology #astronomy

Now streaming live on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI0qas1aUPc the Kavli Laureate Lecture "Starquakes, exoplanets, and extraterrestrial life" - the program will highlight the research and accomplishments of Dr. Conny Aerts, a pioneer in #asteroseismology.

Just uploaded the "asteroseismic" HR diagram I created for my review in A&G to the Wikimedia Commons and added it to the @wikipedia article on #Asteroseismology. Use it and edit it to suit your needs!

#astronomy #astrodon

It's also taught me that SVG is a bit of a weird format. I can't paste it here and there are a few flaws in the online preview version that I can't reproduce...

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Asteroseismic_HR_diagram.svg

Just missed another #TESStuesday but here are the clear solar-like oscillations in β Hyi anyway, using 20-second data from TESS Sector 67. TESS's PI recently spoke at a conference in Hawai'i and revealed that the spacecraft—already 5 years into its mission—could last *decades*...

#asteroseismology

Do you work on #fluiddynamics of #planetaryCores /moons/atmospheres or #stars? submit your abstract to our #interdisciplinary session for this year's AGU meeting in San Francisco!

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/prelim.cgi/Session/185760

#AGU23 #InertialWaves #GravityWaves #Asteroseismology #Helioseismology #PlanetaryScience
#IcyMoons #GasGiants

Do you work on #fluiddynamics of #planetaryCores /moons/atmospheres or #stars? submit your abstract to our #interdisciplinary session for this year's AGU meeting in San Francisco!

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm23/prelim.cgi/Session/185760

#AGU23 #InertialWaves #GravityWaves #Asteroseismology #Helioseismology #PlanetaryScience
#IcyMoons #GasGiants

At the suggestion of some friends and collaborators, my review of #asteroseismology for the April edition of #Astronomy & Geophysics, magazine of the RAS, is now available on arXiv:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15070

It lacks the formatting and some extra images added by A&G's production team, so I recommend reading the published version if you have access (e.g. through your University).

Another #TESStuesday, another old SIMBAD tab closed. This time it's the metal-poor subgiant HD 59984. This is a slightly (5-point) smoothed power spectrum for the 20s cadence data in Sector 34, with clear oscillations around ~1100 μHz. Huber et al. (2022) showed how (and why) this "fast" cadence data is better for bright solar-like oscillators. Here too, the the oscillations aren't nearly as clear in the data at 120s cadence.

#asteroseismology

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=HD+59984

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022AJ....163...79H

This #TESStuesday, I'm closing a tab with a mysterious SIMBAD search for HD 47874. Here's the amplitude spectrum for TESS Sectors 6 & 7. It appears to be a (blended?) eclipsing binary (hence the dense, low-frequency comb) that's also a high-order δ Scuti pulsator.

#asteroseismology

simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=HD+47874

NASA's K2 mission (Kepler after the second reaction wheel failed) seems an untapped resource for the #asteroseismology of solar-like oscillators, especially on the main sequence. So it's great to see González-Cuesta et al. (featuring @sy_breton) analysing K2 data for 8 stars on arXiv yesterday:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.00087

Just look at these echelle diagrams!

For #TESStuesday, it's back to closing old SIMBAD tabs. In this case, at least I remember why I ever searched this star! χ Her is a subgiant and depleted in metals compared to the Sun. Its solar-like oscillations are nice and clear in the TESS data for sectors 50 & 51. #asteroseismology

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=chi+her

Before I even applied for my current RSE role, I was asked if I'd like to briefly review some recent results in #asteroseismology for #Astronomy & Geophysics, the magazine of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The article, which they dubbed "Finger on the pulse of asteroseismology", has now been published:

https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article/64/2/2.30/7077792

There wasn't nearly enough space (nor did I have time) to be exhaustive but it offers a personal view into the state of asteroseismology. Hope you enjoy!

I'll continue to keep #TESStuesday alive by closing tabs on SIMBAD searches that I don't fully remember making. Here's HD 59984, a metal-poor G0 subgiant. I think I looked these up while on a tangent about studying the Milky Way's formation using these stars, for which Fuhrmann & Chini (2021) gave a sample.

The solar-like oscillations are crystal clear in TESS's 20s data from Sector 34.

#asteroseismology

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=HD+59984

On December 27, 2006, the European space observatory CoRoT was launched. CoRoT‘s two objectives are to search for extrasolar planets with short orbital periods, particularly those of large terrestrial size, and to perform asteroseismology by measuring solar-like oscillations in stars.

http://scihi.org/corot-space-observatory/

#space #exoplanet #asteroseismology #historyofscience #astronomy