“Rapid-Fire” Spectroscopy of Kepler Solar-Like Oscillators

Abstract

The NASA Kepler mission has been continuously monitoring the same field of the sky since the successful launch in March 2009, providing high-quality stellar lightcurves that are excellent data for asteroseismology, far superior to any other observations available at the present. In order to make a meaningful analysis and interpretation of the asteroseismic data, accurate fundamental parameters for the observed stars are needed. The currently available parameters are quite uncertain as illustrated by e.g. Thygesen et al. (A&A 543:A160, 2012), who found deviations as extreme as 2 dex in [Fe/H] and logg, compared to catalogue values. Thus, additional follow-up observations for these targets are needed in order to put firm limits on the parameter space investigated by the asteroseismic modellers. Here, we propose a method for deriving accurate metallicities of main sequence and subgiant solar-like oscillators from medium resolution spectra with a moderate S/N. The method takes advantage of the additional constraints on the fundamental parameters, available from asteroseismology and multi-color photometry. The approach enables us to reduce the analysis overhead significantly when doing spectral synthesis, which in turn will increases the efficiency of follow-up observations.