Abstract
Many late-type stars across the Milky Way exhibit observable pulsations similar to our Sun that open up a window into stellar interiors. The NASA Kepler mission, a space-based photometric telescope, measured the micro-magnitude luminosity fluctuations caused by solar-like oscillations of tens of thousands of stars for almost 10 years. Detailed stellar structure, evolution, and oscillation theoretical work established in the decades before, such as predictions about mode mixing in the interior of red-giant stars, among many others, now had voluminous precision data against which it could be tested. The overwhelming result is the general validation of the theory of stellar oscillations as well as stellar-structure models; however, important gaps in our understanding of interior physics was also revealed by Kepler. For example, interior rotation, convection, and mixing processes are complex phenomena not fully captured by standard models. This review explores some of the important impacts Kepler observations of solar-like oscillations across the cool end of the H-R diagram has had on stellar astrophysics through the use of asteroseismology.
Highlights
The NASA Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 and spent the four years staring at a fixed region of the sky toward the Cygnus and Lyra constellations (Borucki et al, 2010; Koch et al, 2010)
Kepler and K2 observed thousands of stars with detectable solar-like oscillations, and the main question this review hopes to address, is what new stellar astrophysics have we learned from stars that pulsate like the Sun? To that end, exciting asteroseismic results in the Kepler era include progress on interior rotation, mixing processes, precise mass and radius measurements, ages and evolutionary state determinations, stellar populations, binarity, granulation, magnetic fields, and interior discontinuities of structure or composition
Asteroseismology of stars that oscillate like the Sun has experienced a paradigm shift as a result of the Kepler mission, yielding data of unprecedented quality
Summary
The NASA Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 and spent the four years staring at a fixed region of the sky toward the Cygnus and Lyra constellations (Borucki et al, 2010; Koch et al, 2010). This review will focus on stars that pulsate in ways similar to our Sun, commonly known as “solarlike” oscillators Such stars may not necessarily be “solar-type” main-sequence objects like the Sun; for example, red giants display solar-like oscillations. These oscillations are due to acoustic (pressure) standing waves. In most cases, they are excited to small, yet observable amplitudes, which are stochastically driven and damped by near-surface turbulent convection (Goldreich and Keeley, 1977). Kepler and K2 observed thousands of stars with detectable solar-like oscillations, and the main question this review hopes to address, is what new stellar astrophysics have we learned from stars that pulsate like the Sun?
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