Keplerand the Long Period Variables

E Hartig,K Hinkle,D K Walter,J Mighell,J Cash,T Lebzelter

doi:10.1051/epjconf/201510106032

Abstract

High precision Kepler photometry is used to explore the details of AGB light curves. Since AGB variability has a typical time scale on order of a year we present methods for the removal of long term trends and quarterly changes in Kepler data. While undergoing long period variations of many magnitudes, the light curves are shown to be smooth at the millimagnitude level over much shorter time intervals. No flares or other rapid events were detected down to the sub-day time scale.

Highlights

We tested a large variety of techniques to handle the extraction of the photometry and the combining of the observing quarters in the optimum way
The pipeline target mask is indicated by the black squares, the black cross gives the expected star location converted from the star’s celestial coordinates
Our small study suggests that stars having two periods with a ratio close to 1 typically do not show a Long secondary periods (LSPs)

Summary

Introduction

We tested a large variety of techniques to handle the extraction of the photometry and the combining of the observing quarters in the optimum way. We do not recommend to use the SAP and PDC pipeline data without a detailed check since we noticed that they do not always give correct results. Superstamps can be used to fill gaps in the observed light curves.

Results

Conclusion