The Pulsation Spectra of Kepler B Stars

The Kepler satellite was designed to obtain single filter light curves of over 100,000 stars during its 3.5 year mission lifetime. The accuracy of each 30 minute measurement is about 20 parts per million for a 12 magnitude star. Although the primary objective of Kepler is to search for the signal of Earth-like planets in these light curves, dozens of pulsating B stars are included among its targets. This poster presents and overview of the techniques used to obtain the frequency spectra of these stars. A data base of stellar pulsation spectra is also presented along with the positions of these stars in the HR diagram. A major limitation of the Kepler data is that it does not allow the spherical harmonic l and m values of the pulsation modes to be determined. To do this multi-color observations or spectra are needed. A list of candidate stars for this type of effort is provided. This work is supported by the NASA Kepler Guest Observer program.