Title: Effective Sunspot Temperatures from Solar Light Curves: a Starspot Modeling Approach to the Sun
Author: Zeki Eker
Affil: King Saud University, Riyadh
Email: eker@ksu.edu.sa
Abstract: The derivation of starspot parameters from the light curves of spotted stars is briefly introduced. The reliability of spot solutions, i. e., the temperatures, sizes and locations of the predicted spots, and the problem of the uniqueness of starspot solutions are summarized. Then, the applicability, the advantage, and the reliability of this technique when applying it to the solar case are described. The derivation of effective sunspot temperatures from the light curves of the Sun (VIRGO data) is formulated. This study introduces a new technique to determine effective sunspot temperatures which is independent from the previous techniques using the measured contrast ratios of the observed spots and neighboring solar photosphere. A temperature representing a sunspot group as a whole permits a meaningfull comparison to the starspot temperatures from the stellar brighness variations by the starspot models with uniform spots.