https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201510105004
Disentangling stellar activity from exoplanetary signals with interferometry
1 Laboratoire Lagrange, UMR 7293 UNS-CNRS-OCA, Boulevard de l’Observatoire, CS 34229, 06304 NICE Cedex 4, France
2 UJF-Grenoble1/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, UMR 5274, Grenoble, F-38041, France
a e-mail: roxanne.ligi@oca.eu
Published online: 23 September 2015
Stellar activity can express as many forms at stellar surfaces: dark spots, convective cells, bright plages. Particularly, dark spots and bright plages add noise on photometric data or radial velocity measurements used to detect exoplanets, and thus lead to false detection or disrupt their derived parameters. Since interferometry provides a very high angular resolution, it may constitute an interesting solution to distinguish the signal of a transiting exoplanet and that of stellar activity. It has also been shown that granulation adds bias in visibility and closure phase measurements, affecting in turn the derived stellar parameters. We analyze the noises generated by dark spots on interferometric observables and compare them to exoplanet signals. We investigate the current interferometric instruments able to measure and disentangle these signals, and show that there is a lack in spatial resolution. We thus give a prospective of the improvements to be brought on future interferometers, which would also significantly extend the number of available targets.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2015
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
