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Solar-like oscillations in the metal-poor subgiant nu Indi: constraining the mass and age using asteroseismology

Timothy R. Bedding, R. Paul Butler, Fabien Carrier, Francois Bouchy, Brendon J. Brewer, Patrick Eggenberger, Frank Grundahl, Hans Kjeldsen, Chris McCarthy, Tine Bjorn Nielsen, Alon Retter, Christopher G. Tinney

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0604453

Abstract

Asteroseismology is a powerful method for determining fundamental properties of stars. We report the first application to a metal-poor object, namely the subgiant star nu Ind. We measured precise velocities from two sites, allowing us to detect oscillations and infer a large frequency separation of Deltanu = 24.25 +/- 0.25 microHz. Combining this value with the location of the star in the H-R diagram and comparing with standard evolutionary models, we were able to place constraints on the stellar parameters. In particular, our results indicate that nu Ind has a low mass (0.85 +/- 0.04 Msun) and is at least 9 Gyr old.

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