ASCL.net

Astrophysics Source Code Library

Making codes discoverable since 1999

ASCL Code Record

[ascl:1209.006] macula: Rotational modulations in the photometry of spotted stars

Photometric rotational modulations due to starspots remain the most common and accessible way to study stellar activity. Modelling rotational modulations allows one to invert the observations into several basic parameters, such as the rotation period, spot coverage, stellar inclination and differential rotation rate. The most widely used analytic model for this inversion comes from Budding (1977) and Dorren (1987), who considered circular, grey starspots for a linearly limb darkened star. That model is extended to be more suitable in the analysis of high precision photometry such as that by Kepler. Macula, a Fortran 90 code, provides several improvements, such as non-linear limb darkening of the star and spot, a single-domain analytic function, partial derivatives for all input parameters, temporal partial derivatives, diluted light compensation, instrumental offset normalisations, differential rotation, starspot evolution and predictions of transit depth variations due to unocculted spots. The inclusion of non-linear limb darkening means macula has a maximum photometric error an order-of-magnitude less than that of Dorren (1987) for Sun-like stars observed in the Kepler-bandpass. The code executes three orders-of-magnitude faster than comparable numerical codes making it well-suited for inference problems.

Code site:
https://github.com/davidkipping/MACULA
Described in:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012MNRAS.427.2487K
Bibcode:
2012ascl.soft09006K
Keywords: NASA, Kepler

Views: 4823

ascl:1209.006
Add this shield to your page
Copy the above HTML to add this shield to your code's website.