Departmental Colloquium

ASTEROSEISMOLOGY AS A TOOL FOR PROBING STELLAR INTERIORS

Gilles Fontaine
Universite de Montreal

Time
Wed. February 15, 2006     1:00 PM     Stirling C

Abstract

Asteroseismology has become a fashionable subfield of astrophysics in recent years. It is basically a technique that allows one to probe the internal structure of stars and infer their global properties such as mass, radius, and surface temperature. The actual "probes" are the normal modes of oscillation that are excited during particular phases of the evolution of a star. It is during such phases that one can observe and study the excited modes which manifest themselves in terms of luminosity variations. I will review the basic principles behind the science of asteroseismology. I will also provide some examples of successful asteroseismological exercises, from the discovery of luminosity variations at the telescope to the determination of the structural properties of individual stars.

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