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Session 43 - Variable Stars.
Display session, Thursday, January 08
Exhibit Hall,
The Advanced Fiber Optic Echelle (AFOE) is a bench-mounted, fiber-fed echelle spectrograph designed for precision radial velocity observations. Located at the 1.5m Tillinghast telescope at Whipple Observatory, the AFOE is used to detect exoplanets and is involved in several projects in asteroseismology, including asteroseismology of Sun-like stars. Procyon has been a prime target for asteroseismology of Sun-like stars due to its proximity and its spectral type (F5 IV-V). Theory predicts that due to its low surface gravity and inefficient surface convection, the amplitudes of its p-mode pulsation modes should be relatively large, though still less than 1 m\ s^-1. While the velocity of individual modes is extremely small, observations of Procyon with the AFOE show excess power in the frequency range between 0.5 to 1.5 MHz. This power may be the result of p-mode oscillations on Procyon, and is consistent with previous results (Brown et al.\ 1991). However, mode identification is required to interpret the ramifications of the observations for the star's structure, which is the goal of asteroseismology. These single-site data are limited in frequency resolution, which may prevent clear identification of individual modes.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: horner@astro.psu.edu
