Data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) project and other helioseismic experiments provide a test for models of stellar interiors and for the thermodynamic and radiative properties, on which the models depend, of matter under the extreme conditions found in the sun. Current models are in agreement with the helioseismic inferences, which suggests, for example, that the disagreement between the predicted and observed fluxes of neutrinos from the sun is not caused by errors in the models. However, the GONG data reveal subtle errors in the models, such as an excess in sound speed just beneath the convection zone. These discrepancies indicate effects that have so far not been correctly accounted for; for example, it is plausible that the sound-speed differences reflect weak mixing in stellar interiors, of potential importance to the overall evolution of stars and ultimately to estimates of the age of the galaxy based on stellar evolution calculations.

We use asteroseismic data obtained by the NASA Kepler mission to estimate the fundamental properties of more than 500 main-sequence and sub-giant stars. Data obtained during the first 10 months of Kepler science operations were used for this work, when these solar-type targets were observed for one month each in survey mode. Stellar properties have been estimated using two global asteroseismic parameters and complementary photometric and spectroscopic data. Homogeneous sets of effective temperatures, T eff , were available for the entire ensemble from complementary photometry; spectroscopic estimates of T eff and [Fe/H] were available from a homogeneous analysis of ground-based data on a subset of 87 stars. We adopt a grid-based analysis, coupling six pipeline codes to 11 stellar evolutionary grids. Through use of these different grid-pipeline combinations we allow implicitly for the impact on the results of stellar model dependencies from commonly used grids, and differences in adopted pipeline methodologies. By using just two global parameters as the seismic inputs we are able to perform a homogenous analysis of all solar-type stars in the asteroseismic cohort, including many targets for which it would not be possible to provide robust estimates of individual oscillation frequencies (due to a combination of low signal-to-noise ratio and short dataset lengths). The median final quoted uncertainties from consolidation of the grid-based analyses are for the full ensemble (spectroscopic subset) approximately 10.8% (5.4%) in mass, 4.4% (2.2%) in radius, 0.017 dex (0.010 dex) in log g, and 4.3% (2.8%) in mean density. Around 36% (57%) of the stars have final age uncertainties smaller than 1 Gyr. These ages will be useful for ensemble studies, but should be treated carefully on a star-bystar basis. Future analyses using individual oscillation frequencies will offer significant improvements on up to 150 stars, in particular for estimates of the ages, where having the individual frequency data is most important.

We have analyzed solar-like oscillations in ∼1700 stars observed by the Kepler Mission, spanning from the main-sequence to the red clump. Using evolutionary models, we test asteroseismic scaling relations for the frequency of maximum power (ν max ), the large frequency separation (∆ν) and oscillation amplitudes. We show that the difference of the ∆ν-ν max relation for unevolved and evolved stars can be explained by different distributions in effective temperature and stellar mass, in agreement with what is expected from scaling relations. For oscillation amplitudes, we show that neither (L/M ) s scaling nor the revised scaling relation by Kjeldsen & Bedding (2011) is accurate for red-giant stars, and demonstrate that a revised scaling relation with a separate luminosity-mass dependence can be used to calculate amplitudes from the main-sequence to red-giants to a precision of ∼25%. The residuals show an offset particularly for unevolved stars, suggesting that an additional physical dependency is necessary to fully reproduce the observed amplitudes. We investigate correlations between amplitudes and stellar activity, and find evidence that the effect of amplitude suppression is most pronounced for subgiant stars. Finally, we test the location of the cool edge of the instability strip in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram using solar-like oscillations and find the detections in the hottest stars compatible with a domain of hybrid stochastically excited and opacity driven pulsation.

We investigate the influence of the ionization of helium on the low-degree acoustic oscillation frequencies in model solar-type stars. The signature in the oscillation frequencies characterizing the ionization-induced depression of the first adiabatic exponent $\gamma$ is a superposition of two decaying periodic functions of frequency $\nu$, with `frequencies' that are approximately twice the acoustic depths of the centres of the Helium I and Helium II ionization regions. That variation is probably best exhibited in the second frequency difference $\Delta_2\nu_{n,l}\equiv\nu_{n-1,l}-2\nu{n,l}+\nu_{n+1,l}$. We show how an analytic approximation to the variation of $\gamma$ leads to a simple representation of this oscillatory contribution to $\Delta_2\nu$ which can be used to characterize the $\gamma$ variation, our intention being to use it as a seismic diagnostic of the helium abundance of the star. We emphasize that the objective is to characterize $\gamma$, not merely to find a formula for $\Delta_2\nu$ that reproduces the data.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures, accepted by MNRAS on 21 November 200

The Kepler mission is providing photometric data of exquisite quality for the asteroseismic study of different classes of pulsating stars. These analyses place particular demands on the pre‐processing of the data, over a range of time‐scales from minutes to months. Here, we describe processing procedures developed by the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium to prepare light curves that are optimized for the asteroseismic study of solar‐like oscillating stars in which outliers, jumps and drifts are corrected.