Project Details
Projekt
Rotation and activity in low-mass stars
Subject Area
Astrophysics and Astronomy
Term
from 2017 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 314665159
The CARMENES survey will focus on detecting planets around M stars which have an outer convective zone or are fully convective. Those stars satisfy the requirements for the operation of an internal magnetic dynamo. We expect that all CARMENES stars, to some degree, will show the signatures of magnetic activity which occur in the photosphere, chromosphere and corona. These signatures of activity can affect the radial velocity measurement of stars and at worst can mimic the presence of a planet. On the other hand, a time series of these values measured by CARMENES provides a very valuable source of information about stellar processes on the central star. Within the project P3 "Rotation and Activity" we will firstly, investigate the time-variable chromospheric features of CARMENES stars and their dependence on stellar parameters, and secondly assess the impact of magnetic activity on the CARMENES radial velocity measurements, and to derive activity-related radial velocity corrections. The project will thus both optimise the sensitivity of the CARMENES planet search and will harvest the information on the chromospheres of very cool stars contained in the approximately 15,000 CARMENES survey spectra.
DFG Programme
Research Units
