2010/02/27 by T. R. Bedding, H. Kjeldsen, T. L. Campante +67 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/713/2/935
published as ApJ, 713, 935 (2010) · accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2010/02/27 · openalex publication_date 2010/03/29 · arxiv updated 2015/05/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We have analyzed data from a multi-site campaign to observe oscillations in the F5 star Procyon. The data consist of high-precision velocities that we obtained over more than three weeks with 11 telescopes. A new method for adjusting the data weights allows us to suppress the sidelobes in the power spectrum. Stacking the power spectrum in a so-called échelle diagram reveals two clear ridges, which we identify with even and odd values of the angular degree ( l = 0 and 2, and l = 1 and 3, respectively). We interpret a strong, narrow peak at 446 μHz that lies close to the l = 1 ridge as a mode with mixed character. We show that the frequencies of the ridge centroids and their separations are useful diagnostics for asteroseismology. In particular, variations in the large separation appear to indicate a glitch in the sound-speed profile at an acoustic depth of ∼1000 s. We list frequencies for 55 modes extracted from the data spanning 20 radial orders, a range comparable to the best solar data, which will provide valuable constraints for theoretical models. A preliminary comparison with published models shows that the offset between observed and calculated frequencies for the radial modes is very different for Procyon than for the Sun and other cool stars. We find the mean lifetime of the modes in Procyon to be 1.29 +0.55 −0.49 days, which is significantly shorter than the 2–4 days seen in the Sun.