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Starspots And Relativity: Applied Doppler Imaging For The Gravity Probe B Mission, Stephen C. Marsden, Svetlana V. Berdyugina, Jean-Francois Donati, Joel A. Eaton, Michael H. Williamson

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

We present Doppler images and surface differential rotation measurements for the primary of the RS CVn binary IM Pegasi, the guide star for the Gravity Probe B experiment. The data used is a subset of that taken during optical support of the mission and was obtained almost nightly over a near three year period from the Automatic Spectroscopic Telescope operated by Tennessee State University. Using the technique of least-squares deconvolution to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the data, we have reconstructed 31 maximum entropy Doppler images of the star. The images show that the spot features are relatively stable for …