Emily Chan
These two stars—V889 Herculis and LQ Hydrae—are both roughly 50 million years old. They have been monitored by robotic telescopes at the Fairborn Observatory for over 30 years. They rotate very rapidly, with periods that last for about one and a half days.
Since they contain many rotational cycles that have been observed for decades, the researchers had a large sample to work with, making the stars the best targets for the study.
The telescopes at the observatory are unable to pick out individual star spots from such a vast distance. Still, the long-term tracking of the stars’ behavior and brightness compensate for that.
“Whether the motivation is to study the rotation and properties of young, active stars or to understand the nature of stars with planets, the observations from Fairborn Observatory have been absolutely crucial,” said Tuomi.
“It is amazing that even in the era of great space-based observations, we can obtain fundamental information on stellar astrophysics with the small [16-inch] ground-based telescopes.”
The study was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
