Many threads of conversation over the past weeks came together today in a set of coincidences. Conversations with Bedell (Flatiron), Pope (NYU), Luger (Flatiron), and Farr (Flatiron) ranging around stochastic processes and inferring stellar surface features from doppler imaging all overlap at stellar asteroseismic p modes: In principle, with high-resolution, high-signal-to-noise stellar spectral time series (and we have these, in hand!) we should be able not only to see p modes but also see their footprint on the stellar surface. That is, directly read ell and em off the spectral data. In addition, we ought to be able to see the associated temperature variations. This is all possible because the stars are slowly rotating, and each mode projects onto the rotating surface differently. Even cooler than all this: Because the modes are coherent for days in the stars we care about, we can build very precise matched filters to combine the data coherently from many exposures. There are many things to do here.
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