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Starspots and exoplanets
Author(s) -
Hatzes A.P.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/1521-3994(200208)323:3/4<392::aid-asna392>3.0.co;2-m
Subject(s) - exoplanet , starspot , physics , radial velocity , planet , stars , astronomy , astrometry , astrophysics
The discovery of exoplanets has resulted from a significant increase in the precision of stellar radial velocity measurements. In the past decade this precision has improved from several hundreds of ms –1 to a few ms –1 . In the near future astrometric measurements will make a similar increase in their precision by factors of several hundred. Although discovering exoplanets is driving the need for these precise measurements, these can also be used to study starspots on Sunlike stars. The largest sunspots can produce a radial velocity variation of several ms –1 and an astrometric signal of order tens of micro‐arcseconds in a nearby solar‐type star. The latter is well above the measurement precision of 4 micro‐arcsecs provided by the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). A combination of precise photometric, radial velocity, and astrometric measurements may enable us to derive spot distributions on slowly rotating late‐type stars with solar‐like levels of activity.