Stellar activity observed by the Kepler Space Telescope. The M dwarf of the Kepler-32 system with five orbiting planets

Abstract

The activity of the central star of the Kepler-32 planetary system is studied using continuous 1141-day observations with the Kepler Space Telescope. The Kepler-32 system includes a slowly rotating Mdwarf (rotational period of 37.8 d) with a mass of 0.54M _⊙ and five planets. One of the unique properties of the system is its compactness: the orbits of all five planets are less than a third of the size of the orbit of Mercury; the planet closest to the star is separated from it by only 4.3 stellar radii. Surface-temperature inhomogeneities of the central star are studied using precise photometric observations of Kepler-32, and their evolution traced. In total, 42 624 individual brightness measurements in the 1141-day (3.1-year) observing interval were selected for the analysis. The calculated amplitude power spectra for the first and second halves of the interval of the Kepler-32 observations indicate appreciable variability of the photometric period, corresponding to the evolution of active regions at various latitudes on the stellar surface. Evidence for the existence of two active regions on the stellar surface separated in phase by 0.42 has been found. Time intervals in which the longitudes of the active regions changed (“flip-flops”) with durations of the order of 200–300 days have been established. The spotted area of the star was, on average, about 1% of the total visible surface, and varied from 0.3 to 1.7%. The results for the dwarf Kepler-32 are compared with those from a spectropolarimetric survey of 23 M dwarfs, including both fully convective stars and stars with weakly radiative cores. For a more detailed comparison, temperature inhomogeneities on the surface of one of the survey stars, DS Leo, was reconstructed using the ground-based observations (316 individual measurements of the V-band brightness of the star during seven observing seasons in an all-sky automated survey). The general properties and evolution of the active regions on DS Leo and Kepler-32 are considered. The positions of the active regions on the surface of Kepler-32 yields no evidence for differential rotation of this star. The possibility of detecting the magnetic field of Kepler-32 is proposed. The analysis of the photometric data for Kepler-32 are also compared to the previous results for the fully convective, low-mass M dwarfs GJ 1243 and LHS 6351. This demonstrates that the observed manifestations of activity on Kepler-32 correspond to those for active G-K stars and to M dwarfs with masses of the order of 0.5M _⊙, rather than Mdwarfs with masses from 0.2 to 0.5M _⊙.