On the seismic age and heavy-element abundance of the Sun

Abstract

We estimate the main-sequence age and heavy-element abundance of the Sun by means of an asteroseismic calibration of theoretical solar models using only low-degree acoustic modes from the BiSON. The method can therefore be applied also to other solar-type stars, such as those observed by the NASA satellite Kepler and the planned ground-based Danish-led SONG network. The age, 4.60+/-0.04 Gy, obtained with this new seismic method, is similar to, although somewhat greater than, today's commonly adopted values, and the surface heavy-element abundance by mass, Zs=0.0142+/-0.0005, lies between the values quoted recently by Asplund et al. (2009) and by Caffau et al. (2009). We stress that our best-fitting model is not a seismic model, but a theoretically evolved model of the Sun constructed with `standard' physics and calibrated against helioseismic data.

16 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• Correcting stellar oscillation frequencies for near-surface effects
• ASTEC -- the Aarhus STellar Evolution Code
• An asteroseismic signature of helium ionization
• A more realistic representation of overshoot at the base of the solar convective envelope as seen by helioseismology
• Solar abundances and helioseismology: fine structure spacings and separation ratios of low-degree p modes
• An Elementary Introduction to the JWKB Approximation

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Asteroseismology of Solar-Type and Red-Giant Stars
• Chemodynamical evolution of the Milky Way disk I: The solar vicinity
• BRITE-Constellation: nanosatellites for precision photometry of bright stars
• Solar structure and evolution
• The chemical composition of the Sun from helioseismic and solar neutrino data
• Measurement of acoustic glitches in solar-type stars from oscillation frequencies observed by Kepler
• Surface-effect corrections for solar-like oscillations using 3D hydrodynamical simulations
• Characterizing solar-type stars from full-length Kepler data sets using the Asteroseismic Modeling Portal
• Asteroseismic estimate of helium abundance of a solar analog binary system
• Asteroseismic modeling of 16 Cyg A & B using the complete Kepler data set
• The Sun was not born in M 67
• Toward a New Kind of Asteroseismic Grid Fitting
• SpaceInn hare-and-hounds exercise: Estimation of stellar properties using space-based asteroseismic data
• Statistical Chronometry of Meteorites. I. The Pb-Pb age of the Solar System's t=0
• Stellar model fits and inversions
• Constraining the Milky Way assembly history with Galactic Archaeology. Ludwig Biermann Award Lecture 2015
• A Bayesian estimation of the helioseismic solar age
• What have we learned from helioseismology, what have we really learned, and what do we aspire to learn?
• CCD $UBV(RI{)}_C$ Photometry of Twenty Open Clusters
• Fundamental properties of solar-like oscillating stars from frequencies of minimum $\Delta \nu$: I. Model computations for solar composition
• Bayesian Seismology of the Sun
• Fundamental properties of solar-like oscillating stars from frequencies of minimum $\Delta \nu$ : II. Model computations for different chemical compositions and mass
• Properties of the ionisation glitch: I. Modelling the ionisation region
• The magnetic future of the Sun
• Properties of the ionisation glitch II. Seismic signature of the structural perturbation
• Solar twins in Gaia DR3 GSP-Spec I. Building a large catalog of Solar twins with ages