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Kepler photometry of the hot Neptune host star HAT-P-11 suggests that its spot latitude distribution is comparable to the Sun’s near solar maximum. We search for evidence of an activity cycle in the Ca ii H & K chromospheric emission S-index with archival Keck/HIRES spectra and observations from the echelle spectrograph on the Astrophysical Research Consortium 3.5 m Telescope at Apache Point Observatory. The chromospheric emission of HAT-P-11 is consistent with an year activity cycle, which plateaued near maximum during the Kepler mission. In the cycle that we observed, the star seemed to spend more time near active maximum than minimum. We compare the normalized chromospheric emission index of HAT-P-11 with other stars. HAT-P-11 has unusually strong chromospheric emission compared to planet-hosting stars of similar effective temperature and rotation period, perhaps due to tides raised by its planet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Astrometric data from the recent Gaia Data Release 1 have been matched against the sample of stars from Kepler with known rotation periods. A total of 1299 bright rotating stars were recovered from the subset of Gaia sources with good astrometric solutions, most with temperatures above 5000 K. From these sources, 894 were selected as lying near the main sequence using their absolute G-band magnitudes. These main-sequence stars show a bimodality in their rotation period distribution, centered roughly around a 600 Myr rotation isochrone. This feature matches the bimodal period distribution found in cooler stars with Kepler, but was previously undetected for solar-type stars due to sample contamination by subgiants. A tenuous connection between the rotation period and total proper motion is found, suggesting that the period bimodality is due to the age distribution of stars within ∼300 pc of the Sun, rather than a phase of rapid angular momentum loss. This work emphasizes the unique power for understanding stellar populations that is created by combining temporal monitoring from Kepler with astrometric data from Gaia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a comprehensive study of the active dM4e star GJ 1243. We use previous observations and ground-based echelle spectroscopy to determine that GJ 1243 is a member of the Argus association of field stars, suggesting it is old. We analyze 11 months of 1 minute cadence data from Kepler, presenting Kepler flare frequency distributions, as well as determining correlations between flare energy, amplitude, duration, and decay time. We find that the exponent α of the power-law flare energy distribution varies in time, primarily due to completeness of sample and the low frequency of high-energy flares. We also find a deviation from a single power law at high energy. We use ground-based spectroscopic observations that were simultaneous with the Kepler data to provide simultaneous photometric and spectroscopic analysis of three low-energy flares, the lowest-energy dMe flares with detailed spectral analysis to date on any star. The spectroscopic data from these flares extend constraints for radiative hydrodynamic flare models to a lower energy regime than has previously been studied. We use this simultaneous spectroscopy and Kepler photometry to develop approximate conversions from the Kepler bandpass to the traditional U and B bands. This conversion will be a critical factor in comparing any Kepler flare analyses to the canon of previous ground-based flare studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Time-Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS) is an SDSS-IV eBOSS subproject primarily aimed at obtaining identification spectra of ∼220,000 optically variable objects systematically selected from SDSS/Pan-STARRS1 multi-epoch imaging. We present a preview of the science enabled by TDSS, based on TDSS spectra taken over ∼320 deg2 of sky as part of the SEQUELS survey in SDSS-III, which is in part a pilot survey for eBOSS in SDSS-IV. Using the 15,746 TDSS-selected single-epoch spectra of photometrically variable objects in SEQUELS, we determine the demographics of our variability-selected sample and investigate the unique spectral characteristics inherent in samples selected by variability. We show that variability-based selection of quasars complements color-based selection by selecting additional redder quasars and mitigates redshift biases to produce a smooth quasar redshift distribution over a wide range of redshifts. The resulting quasar sample contains systematically higher fractions of blazars and broad absorption line quasars than from color-selected samples. Similarly, we show that M dwarfs in the TDSS-selected stellar sample have systematically higher chromospheric active fractions than the underlying M-dwarf population based on their Hα emission. TDSS also contains a large number of RR Lyrae and eclipsing binary stars with main-sequence colors, including a few composite-spectrum binaries. Finally, our visual inspection of TDSS spectra uncovers a significant number of peculiar spectra, and we highlight a few cases of these interesting objects. With a factor of ∼15 more spectra, the main TDSS survey in SDSS-IV will leverage the lessons learned from these early results for a variety of time-domain science applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an analysis of the starspots on the active M4 dwarf GJ 1243, using 4 years of time series photometry from Kepler. A rapid P = 0.592596 ± 0.00021 days rotation period is measured due to the ∼2.2% starspot-induced flux modulations in the light curve. We first use a light curve modeling approach, using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain sampler to solve for the longitudes and radii of the two spots within 5 day windows of data. Within each window of time the starspots are assumed to be unchanging. Only a weak constraint on the starspot latitudes can be implied from our modeling. The primary spot is found to be very stable over many years. A secondary spot feature is present in three portions of the light curve, decays on 100–500 day timescales, and moves in longitude over time. We interpret this longitude shearing as the signature of differential rotation. Using our models we measure an average shear between the starspots of 0.0047 rad day−1, which corresponds to a differential rotation rate of Δ = 0.012 ± 0.002 rad day−1. We also fit this starspot phase evolution using a series of bivariate Gaussian functions, which provides a consistent shear measurement. This is among the slowest differential rotation shear measurements yet measured for a star in this temperature regime, and provides an important constraint for dynamo models of low-mass stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the selection algorithm and anticipated results for the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS). TDSS is an Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-IV Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) subproject that will provide initial identification spectra of approximately 220,000 luminosity-variable objects (variable stars and active galactic nuclei across 7500 deg2 selected from a combination of SDSS and multi-epoch Pan-STARRS1 photometry. TDSS will be the largest spectroscopic survey to explicitly target variable objects, avoiding pre-selection on the basis of colors or detailed modeling of specific variability characteristics. Kernel Density Estimate analysis of our target population performed on SDSS Stripe 82 data suggests our target sample will be 95% pure (meaning 95% of objects we select have genuine luminosity variability of a few magnitudes or more). Our final spectroscopic sample will contain roughly 135,000 quasars and 85,000 stellar variables, approximately 4000 of which will be RR Lyrae stars which may be used as outer Milky Way probes. The variability-selected quasar population has a smoother redshift distribution than a color-selected sample, and variability measurements similar to those we develop here may be used to make more uniform quasar samples in large surveys. The stellar variable targets are distributed fairly uniformly across color space, indicating that TDSS will obtain spectra for a wide variety of stellar variables including pulsating variables, stars with significant chromospheric activity, cataclysmic variables, and eclipsing binaries. TDSS will serve as a pathfinder mission to identify and characterize the multitude of variable objects that will be detected photometrically in even larger variability surveys such as Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are well-known to exhibit flux variability across a wide range of wavelength regimes, but the precise origin of the variability at different wavelengths remains unclear. To investigate the relatively unexplored near-IR (NIR) variability of the most luminous AGNs, we conduct a search for variability using well sampled JHKs-band light curves from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) calibration fields. Our sample includes 27 known quasars with an average of 924 epochs of observation over three years, as well as one spectroscopically confirmed blazar (SDSS J14584479+3720215) with 1972 epochs of data. This is the best-sampled NIR photometric blazar light curve to date, and it exhibits correlated, stochastic variability that we characterize with continuous auto-regressive moving average (CARMA) models. None of the other 26 known quasars had detectable variability in the 2MASS bands above the photometric uncertainty. A blind search of the 2MASS calibration field light curves for active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates based on fitting CARMA(1,0) models (damped-random walk) uncovered only seven candidates. All seven were young stellar objects within the ρ Ophiuchus star forming region, five with previous X-ray detections. A significant γ-ray detection (5σ) for the known blazar using 4.5 yr of Fermi photon data is also found. We suggest that strong NIR variability of blazars, such as seen for SDSS J14584479+3720215, can be used as an efficient method of identifying previously unidentified γ-ray blazars, with low contamination from other AGNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]