Search

Photometric and spectroscopic variability of late-type stars frequently has been interpreted as evidence of magnetic activity. The standard picture of stellar activity – inherited from solar observations – includes cool, dark “spots” in the photosphere and hot, dense regions in the chromosphere and coronae. The immediate cause of each of these phenomena is a closed topology of the local magnetic field. Because stars appear as mere points of light, these localized phenomena have not been directly resolvable on stars other than the Sun. Most observed effects are produced by an asymmetric distribution of starspots. If the distribution is symmetric, it would escape detection by most current techniques of light-curve and line-profile modeling. Even more troubling, the stellar properties measured with these techniques describe only a difference between contrasting hemispheres, not an absolute measure.

Several groups at this meeting are presenting maps of the spatial distribution of either brightness or effective temperature in the photospheres of rapidly-rotating, late-type stars. It is generally believed that structure seen in these maps traces the magnetic topology, in analogy with the Sun. We expect the structure of the outer atmospheres (i.e., chromosphere and corona) of these stars to be even more directly tied to the magnetic topology; the magnetic structure is three-dimensional. In order to probe the radial dimension of stellar atmospheres, we need to combine maps of the spatial distribution of emission from chromospheres and coronae with these detailed photospheric maps.Along with collaborators at Armagh, Catania, Boulder, Paris, Helsinki, and Stony Brook, I have been obtaining high-dispersion ultraviolet spectra of several rapidly-rotating, late-type stars using the IUE spacecraft. I discuss results for two stars, El Eridani and HD 199178, for which photospheric maps are presented elsewhere at this conference.

Approximately 10 very bright flares in RS CVn systems have been observed with the IUE. In several cases, high-resolution spectra of the Mg II k line profiles were obtained before, during, and after the flare. Such data permit us to measure the position and size of the flaring region, the amount of line broadening, and any systematic flow velocity. In two cases, several spectra were obtained during the flare decay, permitting us to study the change in these quantities during the flare decay.