Hide and Seek Planets
Is CoRoT-7d real, or is it stellar activity masquerading as a planet? Haywood et al. build a noise model to analyze CoRoT-7’s activity to find out.
Binary Hunting with Phase Variations
How do pulsating stars give away their secret identities as binary dance partners? In this paper, the authors demonstrate a new way to not only detect binaries we may have missed in the Kepler data, but also to measure their velocities without spectra.
Hot Jupiters and Their Effects on Host Stars
Hot Jupiters offer an interesting mechanism for affecting the rotation and magnetic activity levels of their host stars.
Linking Stellar Age, Rotation, and Magnetic Activity
We have repeatedly seen how Kepler goes above and beyond its original mission of finding exoplanets. Today’s paper is no exception.
One Star, Two Star, Brown Star, Blue Star
Enter the observed oddball: a subdwarf B (sdB) star. These unexpected stars are fusing helium into carbon and oxygen in their core and only have a thin hydrogen envelope. So, where did the hydrogen go?
A star with a fake ID?
Most binary stars probably formed at the same time, meaning all stars in the same system should have the same age. The authors of this paper analyze a stellar binary system where one star appears to be lying about its age, as one star appears 3 billion years older than its companion.