Credit: IAC (Gabriel Perez Diaz, Antonio Jiménez, Rafa García) click picture for animation

Chaplin W.J., Kjeldsen H., Christensen-Dalsgaard J., Basu, S., Miglio A., Appourchaux T., Bedding T.R., Elsworth Y., García R.A., Gilliland R.L., Girardi L., Houdek G., Karoff C., Kawaler S.D., Metcalfe T.S., Molenda-Zakowicz J., Monteiro M.J.P.F.G., Thompson M.J., Verner G.A., Ballot J., Bonanno A., Brandão I. M., Broomhall A.-M., Bruntt H., Campante T.L., Corsaro E., Creevey O.L., Dogan G., Esch L., Gai N., Gaulme P., Hale S.J., Handberg R., Hekker S., Huber D., Jiménez A., Mathur S., Mazumdar A., Mosser B., New R., Pinsonneault M.H., Pricopi D., Quirion P.-O., Régulo C., Salabert D., Serenelli A.M., Aguirre V. Silva, Sousa S.G., Stello D., Stevens I.R., Suran M.D., Uytterhoeven K., White T.R., Borucki W.J., Brown T.M., Jenkins J.M., Kinemuchi K., Van Cleve J., Klaus T.C.

In addition to its search for extrasolar planets, the NASA Kepler mission provides exquisite data on stellar oscillations. We report the detections of oscillations in 500 solar-type stars in the Kepler field of view, an ensemble that is large enough to allow statistical studies of intrinsic stellar properties (such as mass, radius, and age) and to test theories of stellar evolution. We find that the distribution of observed masses of these stars shows intriguing differences to predictions from models of synthetic stellar populations in the Galaxy.