RR Lyrae Research with the Kepler Mission

TL;DR

The Kepler Mission provides extensive high-precision photometry data that significantly advances the study of RR Lyrae stars, offering new insights into their properties and behaviors.

Contribution

This paper reviews how Kepler data enhances RR Lyrae research, highlighting unprecedented time coverage and data quality for variable star analysis.

Findings

Kepler data offers continuous, high-precision observations of RR Lyrae stars.

Kepler observations reveal new details about RR Lyrae pulsation modes.

The mission's data improves understanding of RR Lyrae star properties.

Abstract

The Kepler Mission is a Discovery mission supported by NASA's Science Mission Directorate, and its primary aim is to discover Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of solar-type stars. The space telescope was designed with a photometer that monitors the Kepler field in a near continuous manner in order to achieve this goal. With this mission, the asteroseismology community also benefits from the Kepler data via the abundant time-series photometry. With a short cadence of 1 minute and long cadence of 30 minute observations, the time coverage for many variable stars is unprecedentedly complete. The Kepler field also contains the archetype RR Lyr, and the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium (KASC) Working Group for RR Lyrae stars have been working to uncover the mysteries surrounding these stars. I will provide an overview of the Kepler program in relation to RR Lyrae research.