Coronal holes are usually defined as dark structures seen in the extreme ultraviolet and X-ray spectrum which are generally associated with open magnetic fields. Deriving reliably the coronal hole boundary is of high interest, as its area, underlying magnetic field, and other properties give important hints as regards high speed solar wind acceleration processes and compression regions arriving at Earth. In this study we present a new threshold-based extraction method, which incorporates the intensity gradient along the coronal hole boundary, which is implemented as a user-friendly SSW-IDL GUI. The Collection of Analysis Tools for Coronal Holes (CATCH) enables the user to download data, perform guided coronal hole extraction and analyze the underlying photospheric magnetic field. We use CATCH to analyze non-polar coronal holes during the SDO-era, based on 193{AA} filtergrams taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) and magnetograms taken by the Heliospheric and Magnetic Imager (HMI), both on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Between 2010 and 2019 we investigate 707 coronal holes that are located close to the central meridian. We find coronal holes distributed across latitudes of about +/-60{deg}, for which we derive sizes between 1.6x10^9^ and 1.8x10^11^km^2^. The absolute value of the mean signed magnetic field strength tends towards an average of 2.9+/-1.9G. As far as the abundance and size of coronal holes is concerned, we find no distinct trend towards the northern or southern hemisphere. We find that variations in local and global conditions may significantly change the threshold needed for reliable coronal hole extraction and thus, we can highlight the importance of individually assessing and extracting coronal holes.
Major space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections are usually accompanied by solar radio bursts, which can potentially be used for real-time space weather forecasts. Type II radio bursts are produced near the local plasma frequency and its harmonic by fast electrons accelerated by a shock wave moving through the corona and solar wind with a typical speed of ~1000km/s. The coronal bursts have dynamic spectra with frequency gradually falling with time and durations of several minutes. This Letter presents a new method developed to detect type II coronal radio bursts automatically and describes its implementation in an extended Automated Radio Burst Identification System (ARBIS 2). Preliminary tests of the method with spectra obtained in 2002 show that the performance of the current implementation is quite high, ~80%, while the probability of false positives is reasonably low, with one false positive per 100-200hr for high solar activity and less than one false event per 10000hr for low solar activity periods. The first automatically detected coronal type II radio burst is also presented.
The potential-density phase-shift method (Zhang et al., 2007AJ....133.2584Z) is an effective new tool for investigating the structure and evolution of galaxies. In this paper, we apply the method to 153 galaxies in the Ohio State University Bright Galaxy Survey (OSUBGS) to study the general relationship between pattern corotation radii and the morphology of spiral galaxies. The analysis is based on near-infrared H-band images that have been deprojected and decomposed assuming a spherical bulge.
We report the discovery as well as the orbital and physical characterizations of two new transiting giant exoplanets, CoRoT-30 b and CoRoT-31 b, with the CoRoT space telescope. We analyzed two complementary data sets: photometric transit light curves measured by CoRoT, and radial velocity curves measured by the HARPS spectrometer. To derive the absolute masses and radii of the planets, we modeled the stars from available magnitudes and spectra. We find that CoRoT-30 b is a warm Jupiter on a close-to-circular 9.06-day orbit around a G3V star with a semi-major axis of about 0.08AU. It has a radius of 1.01+/-0.08R_Jup_, a mass of 2.90+/-0.22M_Jup_, and therefore a mean density of 3.45+/-0.65g/cm^3^. The hot Jupiter CoRoT-31 b is on a close to circular 4.63-day orbit around a G2 IV star with a semi-major axis of about 0.05AU. It has a radius of 1.46+/-0.30R_Jup_, a mass of 0.84+/-0.34M_Jup_, and therefore a mean density of 0.33+/-0.18g/cm^3^. Neither system seems to support the claim that stars hosting planets are more depleted in lithium. The radii of both planets are close to that of Jupiter, but they differ in mass; CoRoT-30 b is ten times denser than CoRoT-31 b. The core of CoRoT-30 b would weigh between 15 and 75 Earth masses, whereas relatively weak constraints favor no core for CoRoT-31 b. In terms of evolution, the characteristics of CoRoT-31 b appear to be compatible with the high-eccentricity migration scenario, which is not the case for CoRoT-30 b. The angular momentum of CoRoT-31 b is currently too low for the planet to evolve toward synchronization of its orbital revolution with stellar rotation, and the planet will slowly spiral-in while its host star becomes a red giant. CoRoT-30 b is not synchronized either: it looses angular momentum owing to stellar winds and is expected reach steady state in about 2Gyr. CoRoT-30 and 31, as a pair, are a truly remarkable example of diversity in systems with hot Jupiters.
We present an analysis of the COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) star 105288363, a new Blazhko RR Lyrae star of type RRab (f0=1.7623d^-1^), observed with the CoRoT spacecraft during the second long run in the direction of the Galactic Centre (LRc02, time-base 145d). The CoRoT data are characterized by an excellent time-sampling and a low noise amplitude of 0.07mmag in the 2-12d^-1^ range and allow us to study not only the fine details of the variability of the star, but also long-term changes in the pulsation behaviour and the stability of the Blazhko cycle. We use, among other methods, standard Fourier analysis techniques and O-C diagrams to investigate the pulsational behaviour of the Blazhko star 105288363. In addition to the frequency pattern expected for a Blazhko RR Lyrae star, we find an independent mode (f1=2.984d^-1^) showing a f0/f1 ratio of 0.59 which is similar to that observed in other Blazhko RR Lyrae stars. The bump and hump phenomena are also analysed, with their variations over the Blazhko cycle. We carefully investigated the strong cycle-to-cycle changes in the Blazhko modulation (P_B_=35.6d), which seem to happen independently and partly diametrically in the amplitude and phase modulations. Furthermore, the phasing between the two types of modulations is found to change during the course of the observations.
We report the discovery of CoRoT-8b, a dense small Saturn-class exoplanet that orbits a K1 dwarf in 6.2 days, and we derive its orbital parameters, mass, and radius. We analyzed two complementary data sets: the photometric transit curve of CoRoT-8b as measured by CoRoT and the radial velocity curve of CoRoT-8 as measured by the HARPS spectrometer. We find that CoRoT-8b is on a circular orbit with a semi-major axis of 0.063+/-0.001AU. It has a radius of 0.57+/-0.02RJ, a mass of 0.22+/-0.03MJ, and therefore a mean density 1.6+/-0.1g/cm^3^. With 67% of the size of Saturn and 72% of its mass, CoRoT-8b has a density comparable to that of Neptune (1.76g/cm^3^). We estimate its content in heavy elements to be 47-63 Earth masses, and the mass of its hydrogen-helium envelope to be 7-23 Earth masses. At 0.063AU, the thermal loss of hydrogen of CoRoT-8b should be no more than about 0.1% over an assumed integrated lifetime of 3Ga.
CoRoT Bright Stars Catalogue with variability classes
Short Name:
III/282
Date:
22 Feb 2022
Publisher:
CDS
Description:
The CoRoT bright stars catalogue describes the 143 different objects observed during the mission, in the "bright star" field of CoRoT, and their major properties. The almost continuous observations lasted between 20 and 156 days, with a regular 32s sampling time.
The CoRoT space mission routinely provides high-precision photometric measurements of thousands of stars that have been continuously observed for months. The discovery and characterization of the first very massive transiting planetary companion with a short orbital period is reported. A series of 34 transits was detected in the CoRoT light curve of an F3V star, observed from May to October 2007 for 152 days. The radius was accurately determined and the mass derived for this new transiting, thanks to the combined analysis of the light curve and complementary ground-based observations: high-precision radial-velocity measurements, on-off photometry, and high signal-to-noise spectroscopic observations.
The discovery of the short-period giant exoplanet population, the so-called hot Jupiter population, and their link to brown dwarfs and low-mass stars challenges the conventional view of planet formation and evolution. We took advantage of the multi-fiber facilities GIRAFFE and UVES/FLAMES (VLT) to perform the first large radial velocity survey using a multi-fiber spectrograph to detect planetary, brown-dwarf candidates and binary stars. We observed 816 stars during 5 consecutive half-nights. These stars were selected within one of the exoplanet fields of the space mission CoRoT.
The homogeneous spectroscopic determination of the stellar parameters is a mandatory step for transit detections from space. Knowledge of which population the planet hosting stars belong to places constraints on the formation and evolution of exoplanetary systems. We used the FLAMES/GIRAFFE multi-fiber instrument at ESO to spectroscopically observe samples of stars in three CoRoT/Exoplanet fields, namely the LRa01, LRc01, and SRc01 fields, and characterize their stellar populations. We present accurate atmospheric parameters, Teff, logg, [M/H], and [alpha/Fe] derived for 1227 stars in these fields using the MATISSE algorithm. The latter is based on the spectral synthesis methodology and automatically provides stellar parameters for large samples of observed spectra. We trained and applied this algorithm to FLAMES observations covering the MgIb spectral range. It was calibrated on reference stars and tested on spectroscopic samples from other studies in the literature. The barycentric radial velocities and an estimate of the vsini values were measured using cross-correlation techniques. We corrected our samples in the LRc01 and LRa01 CoRoT fields for selection effects to characterize their FGK dwarf stars population, and compiled the first unbiased reference sample for the in-depth study of planet metallicity relationship in these CoRoT fields. We conclude that the FGK dwarf population in these fields mainly exhibit solar metallicity. We show that for transiting planet finding missions, the probability of finding planets as a function of metallicity could explain the number of planets found in the LRa01 and LRc01 CoRoT fields. This study demonstrates the potential of multi-fiber observations combined with an automated classifier such as MATISSE for massive spectral classification.