What is Matrix Light Curve Inversion?
Now that a little is known about the nature of starspots, it is time to tackle MLI itself. The first step in this process is to imagine that the surface of the star has been partitioned so that way it is easier to keep track of what is happening over the entire surface of the star. If the surface of a star is known, i.e. if the brightness of each patch is known, then we can do the forward case. Summing over all the visible patches gives the total brightness of the star at a particular moment in time along the viewer’s line of sight. By, allowing the star to rotate and then repeating the process, it is possible to construct the star’s light curve. This is not what we want to do though. In fact, we want to do exactly the opposite case: light curves can be easily obtained through observation, and we would like to know the spot configuration. (Cite: Harmon & Crews, AJ, 2000) The simplest case would be to find the set of patch brightnesses that creates a curve that exactly fits the measured
