Eric Michel

Understanding our Galaxy’s structure, formation, and evolution will, over the next decades, continue to benefit from the wonderful large survey byGaia, for astrometric, kinematic, and spectroscopic characterization, and by large spectroscopic surveys for chemical characterization. The weak link for full exploitation of these data is age characterization, and stellar age estimation relies predominantly on mass estimates. The ideas presented in this White Paper shows that a seismology survey is the way out of this situation and a natural complement to existing and planned surveys. These ideas are strongly rooted in the past decade’s experience of the so-called Seismology revolution, initiated with CoRoT andKepler. The case of red giant stars is used here as the best current illustration of what we can expect from seismology for large samples, but premises for similar developments exist in various other classes of stars covering other ranges of age or mass. Whatever the star considered, the first information provided by stellar pulsations is always related to the mean density and thus to the mass (and age). In order to satisfy the need for long-duration and all-sky coverage, we rely on a new instrumental concept which decouples integration time and sampling time. We thus propose a long (~1 year) all-sky survey which would perfectly fit between TESS, PLATO, and the Rubin Observatory (previously known as LSST) surveys to offer a time domain complement to the current and planned astrometric and spectroscopic surveys. The fine characterization of host stars is also a key aspect for the interpretation and exploitation of the various projects -- anticipated in the framework of the Voyage 2050 programme -- searching for atmospheric characterization of terrestrial planets or, more specifically, looking for a signature of life, in distant planets.

The period 2035-50 considered in the ESA Voyage long-term plan will coincide with a series of foreseeable advances in the characterization of the stellar content of the Milky Way. The Gaia mission, combined with large-scale spectroscopic surveys, is helping to build an unprecedented census in terms of the astrometric, kinematic and chemical properties of Galactic stellar populations. Within a decade, precise measurements of such properties will be available for hundreds of millions of stars. Meanwhile, time-domain surveys initiated with CoRoT and Kepler/K2 and carried on by space missions such as TESS and PLATO or ground-based projects like the LSST, will have brought asteroseismology to a high level of maturity. The combination of precise ages from asteroseismology with astrometric and spectroscopic data, on large stellar samples, is allowing Galactic archaeologists to gain new insight into the assembly history of the Milky Way. Recent breakthroughs --- based on the detection of solar-like oscillations in tens of thousands of red-giant stars --- demonstrate the potential of such approach. Therefore, we are convinced that an all-sky, high-cadence, long-duration stellar variability survey will become a scientific priority in the 2035-50 period. The Chronos concept presented here consists in a time-domain extension to Gaia. It will allow for mass and age estimates for half a million red giants within 1.7 kpc from the Sun and hence shed a new light on our understanding of the Galactic dynamics and archaeology. In terms of the targeted pulsators, Chronos will bridge the gap between PLATO and the LSST by surveying stars all the way from the subgiant branch to the early AGB. Finally, it will surpass all previous surveys capable of conducting asteroseismology in terms of the combined sky coverage and duration of the observations (2 x 3.75 months over the whole sky and >5 years in the CVZ).

CoRoT and Kepler have brought a new and deep experience in long-term photometric surveys and how to use them. This is true for exoplanets characterizing, stellar seismology and beyond for studying several other phenomena, like granulation or activity. Based on this experience, it has been possible to propose new generation projects, like TESS and PLATO, with more specific scientific objectives and more ambitious observational programs in terms of sky coverage and/or duration of the observations. In this context and as a prospective exercise, we explore here the possibility to set up an all-sky survey optimized for seismic indices measurement, providing masses, radii and evolution stages for half a million solar-type pulsators (subgiants and red giants), in our galactic neighborhood and allowing unprecedented stellar population studies.

Context. The results obtained by asteroseismology with data from space missions such as CoRoT and Kepler are providing new insights into stellar evolution. After five years of observations, CoRoT is continuing to provide high-quality data and we here present an analysis of the CoRoT observations of the double star HD 169392, complemented by ground-based spectroscopic observations.Aims. This work aims at characterising the fundamental parameters of the two stars, their chemical composition, the acoustic-mode global parameters including their individual frequencies, and their dynamics.Methods. We analysed HARPS observations of the two stars to derive their chemical compositions. Several methods were used and compared to determine the global properties of stars’ acoustic modes and their individual frequencies from the photometric data of CoRoT.Results. The new spectroscopic observations and archival astrometric values suggest that HD 169392 is a weakly bound wide binary system. We obtained spectroscopic parameters for both components which suggest that they originate from the same interstellar cloud. However, only the signature of oscillation modes of HD 169392 A was measured; the signal-to-noise ratio of the modes in HD 169392B is too low to allow any confident detection. For HD 169392 A we were able to extract parameters of modes for ℓ = 0, 1, 2, and 3. The analysis of splittings and inclination angle gives two possible solutions: one with with splittings and inclination angles of 0.4−1.0 μHz and 20 − 40°, the other with 0.2−0.5 μHz and 55−86°. Modelling this star using the Asteroseismic Modeling Portal (AMP) gives a mass of 1.15 ± 0.01 M ⊙, a radius of 1.88 ± 0.02 R ⊙, and an age of 4.33 ± 0.12 Gyr. The uncertainties come from estimated errors on the observables but do not include uncertainties on the surface layer correction or the physics of stellar models.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

Oscillations of the Sun have been used to understand its interior structure. The extension of similar studies to more distant stars has raised many difficulties despite the strong efforts of the international community over the past decades. The CoRoT (Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits) satellite, launched in December 2006, has now measured oscillations and the stellar granulation signature in three main sequence stars that are noticeably hotter than the sun. The oscillation amplitudes are about 1.5 times as large as those in the Sun; the stellar granulation is up to three times as high. The stellar amplitudes are about 25% below the theoretic values, providing a measurement of the nonadiabaticity of the process ruling the oscillations in the outer layers of the stars.

Oscillations of the Sun have been used to understand its interior structure. The extension of similar studies to more distant stars has raised many difficulties despite the strong efforts of the international community over the past decades. The CoRoT (Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits) satellite, launched in December 2006, has now measured oscillations and the stellar granulation signature in three main sequence stars that are noticeably hotter than the sun. The oscillation amplitudes are about 1.5 times as large as those in the Sun; the stellar granulation is up to three times as high. The stellar amplitudes are about 25% below the theoretic values, providing a measurement of the nonadiabaticity of the process ruling the oscillations in the outer layers of the stars.

We have carried out a multi-site campaign to measure oscillations in the F5 star Procyon A. We obtained high-precision velocity observations over more than three weeks with eleven telescopes, with almost continuous coverage for the central ten days. This represents the most extensive campaign so far organized on any solar-type oscillator. We describe in detail the methods we used for processing and combining the data. These involved calculating weights for the velocity time series from the measurement uncertainties and adjusting them in order to minimize the noise level of the combined data. The time series of velocities for Procyon shows the clear signature of oscillations, with a plateau of excess power that is centred at 0.9 mHz and is broader than has been seen for other stars. The mean amplitude of the radial modes is 38.1 +/- 1.3 cm/s (2.0 times solar), which is consistent with previous detections from the ground and by the WIRE spacecraft, and also with the upper limit set by the MOST spacecraft. The variation of the amplitude during the observing campaign allows us to estimate the mode lifetime to be 1.5 d (+1.9/-0.8 d). We also find a slow variation in the radial velocity of Procyon, with good agreement between different telescopes. These variations are remarkably similar to those seen in the Sun, and we interpret them as being due to rotational modulation from active regions on the stellar surface. The variations appear to have a period of about 10 days, which presumably equals the stellar rotation period or, perhaps, half of it. The amount of power in these slow variations indicates that the fractional area of Procyon covered by active regions is slightly higher than for the Sun.