Aldebaran b's Temperate Past Uncovered in Planet Search Data

• Published in: Astrophysical journal. Letters Vol. 865; no. 2; p. L20
• Main Authors: Farr, Will M., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Davies, Guy R., North, Thomas S. H., White, Timothy R., Barrett, Jim W., Miglio, Andrea, Lund, Mikkel N., Antoci, Victoria, Andersen, Mads Fredslund, Grundahl, Frank, Huber, Daniel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin The American Astronomical Society 01.10.2018; IOP Publishing
• Subjects: Autoregressive models; Autoregressive moving average; Autoregressive moving-average models; Autoregressive processes; Celestial bodies; Data search; Extrasolar planets; Gas giant planets; Gaussian process; Giant stars; methods: data analysis; methods: statistical; Oscillations; Planets; planets and satellites: individual (Aldebaran b); Radial velocity; Red giant stars; Space telescopes; Spectroscopy; Stars; stars: individual (Aldebaran); stars: oscillations (including pulsations); techniques: radial velocities
• ISSN: 2041-8205; 2041-8213
• DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aadfde

The nearby red giant Aldebaran is known to host a gas giant planetary companion from decades of ground-based spectroscopic radial velocity measurements. Using Gaussian Process-based Continuous Auto-Regressive Moving Average models, we show that these historic data also contain evidence of acoustic oscillations in the star itself, and verify this result with further dedicated ground-based spectroscopy using the SONG telescope and space-based photometry with the Kepler Space Telescope. From the frequency of these oscillations we determine the mass of Aldebaran to be 1.16 0.07 , and note that this implies its planet will have been subject to insolation comparable to the Earth for some of the star's main sequence lifetime. Our approach to sparse, irregularly sampled time series astronomical observations has the potential to unlock asteroseismic measurements for thousands of stars in archival data, and push to lower-mass planets around red giant stars.