Speaker
Thomas Hackman
(Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO)
Description
A basic method to measure the surface differential rotation on both the Sun and stars
is to trace the movement of spots. The general notion is that spots on late-type
stars are equivalents of sunspots. However, results from Doppler imaging and
photometric time series analysis as well as numerical modelling have cast shadows of
doubts on this assumption. It has been hard to observationally establish the
connection between magnetic fields and cool spots. Furthermore it is not clear
whether the huge cool structures seen on active stars are like "blown up" sunspots or
groups of smaller spots. In this talk I will discuss some observational results of
starspots in comparison to sunspots.
Primary author
Thomas Hackman
(Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO)
