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PPGF Astronomers and Students Conduct Pioneer Remote Observational Mission of the European Southern Observatory
The referred mission with the HARPS spectrometer, in addition to be pioneer at the UFRN level, is also the first mission conducted remotely by Brazilian Astronomers. During this mission, 198 stars were observed, 18 of which are part of an international program of extrasolar planet search conducted by Prof. José Renan de Medeiros, to whom are associated four Doctoral Theses conducted by PPGF students under supervision of the three Professors mentioned above.
Postdoctoral scholarships UFRN-Serrapilheira
Prof. Tommaso Macrì receives R$1 million grant from Instituto Serrapilheira – scholarship opportunities available
2020 PPGF Week
Prof. Bruno Ricardo de Carvalho is elected Affiliated Member of the ABC
Prof. José Renan de Medeiros receives the UFRN Outstanding Researcher Award
Doctoral Qualifying Exam
The Future of the Sun
A major obstacle to achieving a fully interpretation of stellar ages and global properties of solar analogs lies the difficulty of measuring distances from stars. This is even more complicated for stars observed by space telescopes such as CoRoT and KEPLER, that have looked far distant objects in the research for faint stars and planetary systems similar to our Solar System.
For solar analog stars, ages can be inferred through rotation, and rotation can be measured through photometric observations performed with the space telescope such as KEPLER, however the lack of precise determination of the evolutionary status of these solar analogues and solar twins observed by the such satellites, CoRoT and KEPLER , was a unanswered question.
Using observational data obtained by the GAIA satellite, recently launched by the European Space Agency (ESA), and physical models for stars also observed by the KEPLER satellite and through analysis based on physical models for measurements along within photometric time series, the scientists published an impactful results on the properties of old stars similar to the Sun, and with consequences for the studies of the future of the Sun.
The international team of scientists led by Prof. José Dias do Nascimento Jr, from UFRN, currently at CfA-SAO Harvard, publish today in The Astrophysical Journal, a precise analysis of evolutionary status and rotation for a unprecedent sample of solar twins that rotate slowly than the Sun, and therefore older. The investigative research analyzed distances through the parallax measurements from GAIA satellite and photometry with the KEPLER satellite. More than 30,000 stars were observed with NASA’s Kepler and measurements of rotation periods and analysis of their distances was presented. Stars more massive or much smaller than the Sun were excluded from work.
“Our program’s started with 30,000 stars, and we investigated a sample of 193 solar analog stars, and we reported rotation periods for hundred of solar analogs. In this study we are also presenting for the first time, rotation period, as well a determination of evolutionary status.”
“From our sample, we are delivering 10 solar analogues slower than the Sun, and these objects represent the future of the Sun in terms of rotation period. These join results from our team and published in 2009. The already discovered stars CoRoT Sol 1, which was the first solar twin characterized photometrically by a space observatory and confirmed by spectroscopic observations with the 8.2-meter SUBARU telescope was the only one on this category. The Subaru telescope is installed near the summit of Mauna Kea mountain in Hawaii, USA. In this current project, some of these solar analogs are in the observational programs already started this week at the Mercator Telescope, in the Canary Islands (Photo above). This is a second stage of the project. The continuity of the research must reveal an important set of other characteristics of those objects”.
Link to paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ab9c16
Authors
UFRN Brazil Eduardo Nunes, Leandro Almeida, Jefferson Soares Matthieu Castro,
USP Brazil Jorge Melendez, Diego Lorenzo, Y. Galarza,
USA CfA-Harvard S. H. Saar, S. Meibom,
Germany Potsdam: S Barnes,
Austria P. G. Beck
Photos of the Mercator Telescope made on August 5 by Dr. Paul Beck, co-author of the study. Mercator it is a 1.2 m telescope located at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos in La Palma, Spain. It is operated by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Leuven University), Belgium, in collaboration with the University of Geneva Observatory and is named is in honors to famous cartographer Gerard Mercator. The telescope was completed in 2000 and is mostly used for exoplanet research programs. Some of the twins in this project are observed there.
SBF Award to Doctorate Thesis 2016/2017
PPGF has representants in the SBF Award to Doctorate Thesis 2016/2017. São eles:
- Prof. Dr. Bruno Carvalho, with the Thesis intitled “Raman Spectroscopy in MoS2-type transition-metal dichalcogenides”; Advisor Prof. Marcos Pimenta (UFMG).
- PostDoc Dr. Diego Paiva Pires, with the Thesis intitled “Geometria da informação quântica: uma abordagem geral acerca do tempo de evolução”; Adivisor Prof. Diogo O. Soares Pinto (IFSC – USP).
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