Résumé / Abstract Seminaire_IAP
« Stellar activity and planets: synergies and challenges »

Suzanne Aigrain
Oxford Astroph., Dept. Physics, Univ. Oxford (Oxford, Grande Bretagne)

Most exoplanets are discovered and studied indirectly, via the time-dependent effects that they have on their parent star. Variability intrinsic to the star, as can be caused by magnetic activity and/or convection, is an important noise source: it can often dwarf the planetary signals of interest and, unlike the latter, we do not have detailed models to describe it. Activity has become one of the main limiting factors for the most precise radial velocity (RV) and transit planet searches, and for the characterisation of exoplanet atmospheres via transmission spectroscopy. I will discuss how activity affects RV and transit data, and outline some new methods which have emerged in the past few years to mitigate its effects. Importantly, exoplanet datasets offer a unique opportunity to study activity-induced variability per se, and I will finish by describing a few recent highlights from stellar rotation period measurements in Kepler data, to detailed investigation of star spot properties using transit data.
vendredi 13 juin 2014 - 11:00
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
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