TY - JOUR A1 - Boehm, Thorsten A1 - Holschneider, Matthias A1 - Lignieres, Frederic A1 - Petit, Pascal A1 - Rainer, Monica A1 - Paletou, Francois A1 - Wade, Gregg A1 - Alecian, Evelyne A1 - Carfantan, Herve A1 - Blazere, Aurore A1 - Mirouh, Giovanni M. T1 - Discovery of starspots on Vega First spectroscopic detection of surface structures on a normal A-type star JF - Astronomy and astrophysics : an international weekly journal N2 - Context. The theoretically studied impact of rapid rotation on stellar evolution needs to be compared with these results of high-resolution spectroscopy-velocimetry observations. Early-type stars present a perfect laboratory for these studies. The prototype A0 star Vega has been extensively monitored in recent years in spectropolarimetry. A weak surface magnetic field was detected, implying that there might be a (still undetected) structured surface. First indications of the presence of small amplitude stellar radial velocity variations have been reported recently, but the confirmation and in-depth study with the highly stabilized spectrograph SOPHIE/OHP was required. Aims. The goal of this article is to present a thorough analysis of the line profile variations and associated estimators in the early-type standard star Vega (A0) in order to reveal potential activity tracers, exoplanet companions, and stellar oscillations. Methods. Vega was monitored in quasi-continuous high-resolution echelle spectroscopy with the highly stabilized velocimeter SOPHIE/OHP. A total of 2588 high signal-to-noise spectra was obtained during 34.7 h on five nights (2 to 6 of August 2012) in high-resolution mode at R = 75 000 and covering the visible domain from 3895 6270 angstrom. For each reduced spectrum, least square deconvolved equivalent photospheric profiles were calculated with a T-eff = 9500 and log g = 4.0 spectral line mask. Several methods were applied to study the dynamic behaviour of the profile variations (evolution of radial velocity, bisectors, vspan, 2D profiles, amongst others). Results. We present the discovery of a spotted stellar surface on an A-type standard star (Vega) with very faint spot amplitudes Delta F/Fc similar to 5 x 10(-4). A rotational modulation of spectral lines with a period of rotation P = 0.68 d has clearly been exhibited, unambiguously confirming the results of previous spectropolarimetric studies. Most of these brightness inhomogeneities seem to be located in lower equatorial latitudes. Either a very thin convective layer can be responsible for magnetic field generation at small amplitudes, or a new mechanism has to be invoked to explain the existence of activity tracing starspots. At this stage it is difficult to disentangle a rotational from a stellar pulsational origin for the existing higher frequency periodic variations. Conclusions. This first strong evidence that standard A-type stars can show surface structures opens a new field of research and ask about a potential link with the recently discovered weak magnetic field discoveries in this category of stars. KW - starspots KW - stars: early-type KW - stars: rotation KW - stars: oscillations KW - stars: individual: Vega KW - asteroseismology Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201425425 SN - 0004-6361 SN - 1432-0746 VL - 577 PB - EDP Sciences CY - Les Ulis ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ripepi, V. A1 - Marconi, M. A1 - Moretti, M. I. A1 - Clementini, Gisella A1 - Cioni, Maria-Rosa L. A1 - de Grijs, R. A1 - Emerson, J. P. A1 - Groenewegen, M. A. T. A1 - Ivanov, V. D. A1 - Piatti, A. E. T1 - THE VMC SURVEY. XIX. CLASSICAL CEPHEIDS IN THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD JF - The astrophysical journal : an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics ; Supplement series N2 - The "VISTA near-infrared YJK(s) survey of the Magellanic Clouds System" (VMC) is collecting deep K-s-band time-series photometry of pulsating variable stars hosted by the two Magellanic Clouds and their connecting Bridge. In this paper, we present Y, J, K-s light curves for a sample of 4172 Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Classical Cepheids (CCs). These data, complemented with literature V values, allowed us to construct a variety of period-luminosity (PL), period-luminosity-color (PLC), and period-Wesenheit (PW) relationships, which are valid for Fundamental (F), First Overtone (FO), and Second Overtone (SO) pulsators. The relations involving the V, J, K-s bands are in agreement with their counterparts in the literature. As for the Y band, to our knowledge, we present the first CC PL, PW, and PLC relations ever derived using this filter. We also present the first near-infrared PL, PW, and PLC relations for SO pulsators to date. We used PW(V, K-s) to estimate the relative SMC-LMC distance and, in turn, the absolute distance to the SMC. For the former quantity, we find a value of Delta mu = 0.55. +/- 0.04 mag, which is in rather good agreement with other evaluations based on CCs, but significantly larger than the results obtained from older population II distance indicators. This discrepancy might be due to the different geometric distributions of young and old tracers in both Clouds. As for the absolute distance to the SMC, our best estimates are mu(SMC) = 19.01 +/- 0.05 mag and mu(SMC) = 19.04 +/- 0.06 mag, based on two distance measurements to the LMC which rely on accurate CC and eclipsing Cepheid binary data, respectively. KW - distance scale KW - Magellanic Clouds KW - stars: oscillations KW - stars: variables: Cepheids Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/0067-0049/224/2/21 SN - 0067-0049 SN - 1538-4365 VL - 224 SP - 199 EP - 229 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jaervinen, S. P. A1 - Hubrig, Swetlana A1 - Ilyin, Ilya A1 - Shenar, Tomer A1 - Schoeller, M. T1 - A search for spectral variability in the highly magnetized O9.7 V star HD 54879 JF - Astronomische Nachrichten = Astronomical notes N2 - The O9.7 V star HD 54879 possesses the second strongest magnetic field among the single, magnetic, O-type stars. In contrast to other magnetic O-type stars, the chemical abundance analysis of HD 54879 indicated a rather normal optical spectrum without obvious element enhancements or depletions. Furthermore, spectral variability was detected only in lines partly formed in the magnetosphere. As this star shows such a deviate, almost nonvariable, spectral behavior, we performed a deeper analysis of its spectral variability on different timescales using all currently available HARPSpol and FORS 2 spectropolarimetric observations. The longitudinal magnetic field strengths measured at different epochs indicate the presence of variability possibly related to stellar rotation, but the current data do not allow us yet to identify the periodicity of the field variation. As spectropolarimetric observations obtained at different epochs consist of subexposures with different integration times, we investigated spectral variability on timescales of minutes. The detected level of variability in line profiles of different elements is rather low, between 0.2 and 1.7%, depending on the integration time of the exposures and the considered element. KW - stars: magnetic fields KW - stars: oscillations KW - techniques: polarimetric KW - stars: individual (HD 54879) Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.201713402 SN - 0004-6337 SN - 1521-3994 VL - 338 SP - 952 EP - 958 PB - Wiley-VCH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Baran, Andrzej S. A1 - Ostensen, R. H. A1 - Telting, J. H. A1 - Vos, Joris A1 - Kilkenny, D. A1 - Vuckovic, Maja A1 - Reed, M. D. A1 - Silvotti, R. A1 - Jeffery, C. Simon A1 - Parsons, Steven G. A1 - Dhillon, V. S. A1 - Marsh, T. R. T1 - Pulsations and eclipse-time analysis of HW Vir JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - We analysed recent K2 data of the short-period eclipsing binary system HW Vir, which consists of a hot subdwarf-B type primary with an M-dwarf companion. We determined the mid-times of eclipses, calculated O-C diagrams, and an average shift of the secondary minimum. Our results show that the orbital period is stable within the errors over the course of the 70 days of observations. Interestingly, the offset from mid-orbital phase between the primary and the secondary eclipses is found to be 1.62 s. If the shift is explained solely by light-travel time, the mass of the sdB primary must be 0.26 M-circle dot, which is too low for the star to be core-helium burning. However, we argue that this result is unlikely to be correct and that a number of effects caused by the relative sizes of the stars conspire to reduce the effective light-travel time measurement. After removing the flux variation caused by the orbit, we calculated the amplitude spectrum to search for pulsations. The spectrum clearly shows periodic signal from close to the orbital frequency up to 4600 mu Hz, with the majority of peaks found below 2600 mu Hz. The amplitudes are below 0.1 part-per-thousand, too low to be detected with ground-based photometry. Thus, the high-precision data from the Kepler spacecraft has revealed that the primary of the HW Vir system is a pulsating sdBV star. We argue that the pulsation spectrum of the primary in HW Vir differs from that in other sdB stars due to its relatively fast rotation that is (nearly) phase-locked with the orbit. KW - binaries: eclipsing KW - stars: oscillations KW - subdwarfs Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2473 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 481 IS - 2 SP - 2721 EP - 2735 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER -