Rotation Rates of Bright Solar-type Stars with TESS

Magnetic features rotating across the surface of a star create photometric variations on timescales of days to weeks, enabling direct measurement of a star’s rotation rate. These variations are low amplitude, making them difficult to detect from the ground, but with TESS, rotational modulation can be observed in hundreds of bright stars. Here we present a catalog of estimated rotation rates and photometric amplitudes for over 200 of the brightest solar-type stars. Because automated searches are subject to spurious detections regardless of periodogram power, we constrained our estimations via direct visual inspection. The resulting list has a very low false positive rate, and will be used to inform target selection for the Copernicus Constellation, a proposed satellite constellation designed to discover Earth-like exoplanets transiting nearby Sun-like stars. Copernicus’ critical Phase 1 mission relies on targeting only the fastest-rotating stars, in order to resolve asteroseismic mode splits and identify stars with inclinations favorable to exoplanetary transits. This TESS-based rotation catalog will allow us to optimize Copernicus’ asteroseismic search, extending the amount of mission time available for the Phase 2 transit search.