How stars shine: Infrared observations expose gaps in models of how stars distribute their light

Astronomers using Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array have found that nearby stars darken toward their edges more strongly at near-infrared wavelengths than predicted by several widely used models of stellar atmospheres, providing a new benchmark for understanding how stars are structured.

The research team measured how the brightness of 31 nearby stars changes from the center of each stellar disk to its edge. This effect, known as limb darkening, makes a star appear fainter at its edge than at its center. The observations show that limb darkening changes more strongly at near-infrared wavelengths than predicted by several widely used stellar-atmosphere models.

Limb darkening appears because stars are not uniformly bright disks. Light from near the center of a stellar disk comes from deeper, hotter layers of the atmosphere, while light from the edge comes from shallower, cooler layers and passes through more stellar material.

“We are not just measuring how large these stars are,” said lead author Narsireddy Anugu, a staff scientist at Georgia State University’s CHARA Array. “We are measuring how their light is distributed across the stellar disk, which directly tests stellar-atmosphere models.”

Measuring stellar surfaces in two filters

By observing the same stars simultaneously using two different near-infrared filters, the team measured how the center-to-edge fading changes with wavelength. As expected, the researchers found that limb darkening is weaker at longer wavelengths. However, the measured change was larger than predicted by several commonly used stellar-atmosphere models.

“This study demonstrates the powerful capabilities of our facility,” said Gail Schaefer, director of the CHARA Array. “By combining light from telescopes across the mountaintop, we can image stars with enough detail to see what their surfaces actually look like.”

Located on Mount Wilson in California, the CHARA Array combines light from six telescopes positioned at different sites across the observatory grounds. By combining the light to produce interference, CHARA achieves the resolving power of a much larger telescope. Rather than capturing direct images of stars, CHARA measures how the contrast of the interference pattern changes with the spacing between telescopes. These measurements reveal both the size of a star and how the brightness changes across its surface.

The survey focused on 31 bright stars in late stages of their lives, when their outer layers have expanded outward. These evolved subgiant, giant and supergiant stars provide especially valuable tests of stellar-atmosphere models because the large convective motion in their extended atmospheres can produce complex brightness profiles.

A larger shift than models predict

Limb darkening affects measurements of stellar diameters. It also impacts how astronomers characterize the properties of exoplanets that transit across the surface of the parent star. The amount of light blocked by the exoplanet during a transit depends on the brightness across the stellar disk.

Across the sample, the limb-darkening strength decreased by about 38% as the near-infrared wavelength increased from 1.6 microns to 2.2 microns. The atmosphere models tested in the study predicted the same overall trend—weaker limb darkening at longer infrared wavelengths—but a smaller decrease of about 17% to 22%. The results show that current models capture the broad behavior but do not fully reproduce the wavelength dependence.

The study, published in The Astronomical Journal, offers a new empirical benchmark for testing stellar-atmosphere models in the near infrared. Additionally, the team found no evidence for surface features like large starspots or hidden companion stars in the sample.

Future work will extend the comparison to broader wavelength coverage, from visible to near-infrared light. The team also plans to image smaller main-sequence stars, which are more difficult to resolve but are especially important for understanding transiting exoplanets around sun-like stars.

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Swati Mestri

Swati Mestri holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering and has worked as a content editor since 2019. She has experience editing research documents across technology, health care, and materials science, and has a particular interest in technology and space.

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Robert Egan

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