Abstract
Pressure-driven (p-mode) oscillations at the surface of the Sun, resulting from sound waves travelling through the solar interior, are a powerful probe of solar structure, just as seismology can reveal details about the interior of the Earth. Astronomers have hoped to exploit p-mode asteroseismology1 in Sun-like stars to test detailed models of stellar structure and evolution, but the observations are extremely difficult. The bright star Procyon has been considered one of the best candidates for asteroseismology, on the basis of models and previous reports2,3,4,5,6,7,8 of p-modes detected in ground-based spectroscopy. Here we present a search for p-modes in 32 days of nearly continuous photometric satellite-based observations of Procyon. If there are p-modes in Procyon, they must have lifetimes less than 2–3 days and/or peak amplitudes <15 parts per million, which defy expectations from the Sun's oscillations and previous theoretical predictions. Target selection for future planned asteroseismology space missions may need to be reconsidered, as will the theory of stellar oscillations.
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Acknowledgements
The MOST project is funded and supervised by the Canadian Space Agency. We are grateful to the engineers at Dynacon Inc., the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies – Space Flight Laboratory, the University of British Columbia Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the University of Vienna and Austrian Technical University (Vienna) for their contributions to the success of the MOST mission. J.M.M., D.B.G., G.A.H.W., A.F.J.M. and S.M.R. were supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Canada. W.W.W. received support from the Austrian Space Agency and the Science Fund. We are grateful for comments and suggestions from T. Brown and J.-P. Maillard.
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Figure 1
Sensitivity of the MOST Procyon photometry to p-modes of varying lifetimes. (PDF 157 kb)
Supplementary Figure 2
Comparing the MOST Procyon photometry to a simulation of granulation noise. (PDF 165 kb)
Supplementary Figure 3
Is there an underlying p-mode pattern in the Procyon data? (PDF 194 kb)
Supplementary Figure 4
Results of "comb response" tests on the MOST data, to search for regular p-mode spacing, using equation (4) of Mosser et al.13 and the same parameters and weighting therein. (PDF 63 kb)
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Matthews, J., Kusching, R., Guenther, D. et al. No stellar p-mode oscillations in space-based photometry of Procyon. Nature 430, 51–53 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02671
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02671
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