Measuring reliable surface rotation rates from Kepler photometric observations

High-quality time series provided by space instrumentation such as CoRoT and Kepler, allow us to measure modulations in the light curves due to changes in the surface of stars related to rotation and activity. Therefore, we are able to infer the surface (possibly differential) rotation rate. However, instrumental perturbations can also produce artificial modulations in the light curves that would mimic those of truly stellar origin. In this work we will concentrate on Kepler observations in order to review an optimal way to extract reliable surface rotation rates.
Comment: Proceedings of the 2012 Fujihara Seminar. 9 pages, 3 figures