NASA Kepler Reaching into the Stars

We are entering a golden era for "stellar physics" – a term coined to describe research about the formation, evolution, interior and the atmospheres of stars. Thanks to a partnership forged among stellar astrophysics, scientists and NASA’s Kepler Mission, a goldmine of data is now available to support the world's efforts to detect planets in the habitable zone around other stars.

The Kepler photometric data is a measurement of light’s “brightness,” and provides an unprecedented opportunity for the emerging field of asteroseismology, the study of the internal structure of stars by observing minuscule pulsations in the star brightness. Asteroseismic research is giving insights into the fundamental properties of stars, including their mass, size, age and internal structure. Kepler enables studies of a large number of stars representing a broad range of types. This asteroseismic research will substantially improve our understanding of stellar evolution. It also will help determine the properties of stars that have planetary systems studied in the Kepler exoplanet program.

The Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC) pushes the envelope in this field of study. Using the unparalleled precision and quality of Kepler data, the KASC research is contributing to stellar astrophysics in profound ways. The consortium is comprised of more than 400 scientists and is led by the Danish Asteroseismology Centre in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

The KASC recently presented new findings published in three papers in the journal Science. In combination, these latest results illustrate the power of the Kepler Space Telescope to probe the internal structure of distant stars.