Spots, Faculae, and Ages: Rotation with Roman and Deep Learning

A team will improve open-source tools to test how well the Roman Space Telescope’s time-domain surveys can measure stellar rotation periods, infer gyrochronological ages, and distinguish magnetic structures on stellar surfaces. Roman is planned to perform infrared time-domain observations, focusing on the Galactic bulge and also covering high latitudes.

Kepler showed that large time-domain datasets let astronomers measure rotation periods across the HR diagram from brightness modulations caused by magnetic spots. Those periods can yield precise ( The team has developed a deep learning method and a suite of simulations to estimate rotation periods under challenging conditions and to probe spot configurations—relative spot temperatures, sizes, and evolution.

This technique has already been used successfully to recover periods from TESS and can be adapted to other missions.

roman telescope, time-domain, stellar rotation, gyrochronology, magnetic spots, galactic bulge, infrared, deep learning, simulations, tess