Hubble Deep Field guide star photometry

Abstract

Since the advent of asteroseismology as a promising innovative tool for investigating internal stellar structure, numerous attempts to detect solar type oscillations in distant stars have been conducted. The three Fine Guidance Sensors of the Hubble Space Telescope can contribute to asteroseismology, but only after the data have been corrected for systematic effects, the South Atlantic Anomaly and terrestrial stray light being the most important. We have applied these corrections and obtained essentially photon noise-limited photometry for two guide stars used during the Hubble Deep Field program. Ground-based spectral classification has revealed that the brighter of the two guide stars is a solar-type star with a spectral type of G2mG0iv. Fine Guidance Sensor photometry for this star gives a noise level in the amplitude spectrum of only 23 ppm, which makes it a good candidate for detecting stochastically driven oscillations. We compare our result with theoretical predictions. The second guide star was classified as K1v and therefore is not a candidate for solar type oscillations. Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA {\it Hubble Space Telescope}, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.