Poster Abstracts - Kepler - NASA

POSTER ABSTRACTSP0603. POSTER SESSION IILOW-MASS ECLIPSING BINARIES FROM KEPLER: REACHING THE NATURAL ROTATION RATEOF M AND K DWARFS. J. L. Coughlin 1 , M. López-Morales 2 , T. E. Harrison 1 , and N. Ule 1 ,1 Department of Astronomy, New Mexico State University, P.O. Box 30001, MSC 4500, Las Cruces, NM88003-8001, jlcough@nmsu.edu, 2 Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (CSIC-IEEC), mlopez@ieec.uab.esIntroduction: An outstanding problem in stellarastrophysics is that the radii of low-mass, mainsequencestars in eclipsing binary systems areconsistently ~10-15% larger than predicted by stellarmodels. This inflation is hypothesized to be primarilydue to enhanced magnetic activity as a result of theirbinarity, and thus artificially enhanced rotation rates.Thus, such an effect should diminish with increasingperiod, but only a small number of low-mass eclipsingbinary systems are known in general, fewer are wellstudiedwith precise light and radial-velocity curves,and barely any of these are at long periods. In additionto exploring the physics of low-mass stars, researchinto this area helps to better characterize the radii ofextrasolar planets around low-mass stars, whose valuesare dependent on those assumed for the host star.New Low-Mass EB’s from Kepler: We havepreviously presented results from our search for newlow-mass eclipsing binary systems via our KeplerGuest Observer programs and a search through thepublicly available data [1][2]. We identified over 100 +low-mass eclipsing binaries suitable for ground-basedfollow-up, with 30 of them having periods greater than10 days. We also modeled the Kepler light curves ofthese systems, and found preliminary evidence for atrend of decreasing stellar radii with increasing orbitalperiod [1].Ground-based Follow-Up: We present results ofour ongoing effort to obtain ground-based multi-colorlight and radial velocity curves of these systems via theKitt Peak National Observatory 4-meter, the ApachePoint Observatory 3.5-meter, and New Mexico StateUniversity 1-meter telescopes. We also presentpreliminary modeling of these data combined with thatfrom the Kepler mission, and examine what futurework is needed to make progress in this area.References: [1] Coughlin et al. (2011) AJ, 141, 78.[2] Harrison et al. (2011), AJ, Submitted.2011 Kepler Science Conference - NASA Ames Research Center 175