Precise Stellar and Planet Properties in the Kepler, K2, & TESS Era
Ashley Chontos (IfA, University of Hawai’i)
The Kepler Space Telescope initiated a revolution by detecting solar-like oscillations in more than 500 main-sequence and subgiant stars. However, most Kepler stars are faint and therefore have limited constraints from independent methods such as long-term ground-based activity monitoring. In addition, population studies of exoplanets orbiting seismic Kepler stars yielded unprecedented insights for planet formation and evolution, including the discovery of the so-called sub-Neptune desert. However, a large fraction of Kepler planet candidates are still awaiting confirmation and therefore, the population of planets orbiting asteroseismic stars is still incomplete. Fortunately TESS is now targeting stars in the nearby solar neighborhood, enabling the unique opportunity to precisely characterize bright systems for which long-term radial velocity time series are already available. In this talk, I will present the TESS discovery of solar-like oscillations for naked-eye solar-analogue ⍺ Mensae and discuss why this is a benchmark system for both stellar astrophysics and exoplanet science. I will also discuss preliminary results of new asteroseismic hosts from Kepler, K2 and TESS based on a systemic analysis of all available data.