Stellar rotation is a crucial aspect of not only stellar evolution but also exoplanet science, and a recent study has built the largest catalog of stellar rotation periods to date.
When I was younger, I read that stars tended to have a bimodal distribution of rotational periods... many have a period measured in hours, and then another large group (like our sun) have a period of many days. The thought at the time was that the slower-rotating stars lost their angular momentum to planetary systems.
That makes sense to me, but that was before we had discovered exoplanets. I wonder if that theory still holds up?
Stellar rotation is a crucial aspect of not only stellar evolution but also exoplanet science, and a recent study has built the largest catalog of stellar rotation periods to date.
When I was younger, I read that stars tended to have a bimodal distribution of rotational periods... many have a period measured in hours, and then another large group (like our sun) have a period of many days. The thought at the time was that the slower-rotating stars lost their angular momentum to planetary systems.
That makes sense to me, but that was before we had discovered exoplanets. I wonder if that theory still holds up?