Kepler spacecraft reveals starquakes

William Atkins
Wednesday, 27 October 2010 22:35

Science - Space

The mission of NASA's Kepler spacecraft was to look for Earth-sized planets out there in space. Astronomers got a pleasant surprise when the spacecraft added exciting new information to astroseismology, the study of the internal structure of pulsating stars.

 

 

On Tuesday, October 27, 2010, scientists attending a news conference at Aarhus University in Denmark made the announcement of the Kepler data.

The scientists, with the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC), highlighted two oscillating stars from the Kepler data.

Star KIC 11026764, according to the NASA article NASA'S Kepler Spacecraft Takes Pulse Of Distant Stars, ''¦has the most accurately known properties of any star in the Kepler field. In fact, few stars in the universe are known to similar accuracy."

"At an age of 5.94 billion years, it has grown to a little over twice the diameter of the sun and will continue to do so as it transforms into a red giant. The oscillations reveal that this star is powered by hydrogen fusion in a thin shell around a helium-rich core."

Dr. Thomas Kallinger (Universities of British Columbia and Vienna), one of the scientists participating in the Keper studies, stated, "We are just about to enter a new area in stellar astrophysics. Kepler provides us with data of such good quality that they will change our view of how stars work in detail."

Additional information on KIC 11026764 appears in a November 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The paper is entitled 'A Precise Asteroseismic Age and Radius for the Evolved Sun-like Star KIC 11026764.'

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