INAF-OAB has a long tradition and expertise in studies of stellar variabibilty and asteroseismology (the study of stellar pulsation and oscillations modes).
The stellar variability, be it due to activity, pulsation or anything else, is a powerful tool to better understand the stellar structure.
To this end we created the SISMA (Spectroscopic Indicators in a SeisMic Archive), a spectroscopic archive of 261 variable stars observed with the high-resolution echelle spectrograph HARPS installed on the ESO’s 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. These observations were carried on as a complement to the CoRoT photometric space mission (COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits).

All the spectra stored in the SISMA archive have been taken with the HARPS spectrograph, installed at the 3.6m telescope of the ESO-LaSilla Observatory in Chile.

71 of the SISMA stars are CoRoT targets and they were observed simultaneously with the satellite, while the remaining stars belong to the same variability classes and they help their characterization.
SISMA contains more then 7000 fully reduced spectra, stellar parameters, mean line profiles, activity and variability indices and many more information for all the 261 observed stars.
In addition to that, also the CoRoT light-curves of the common targets have been stored in the archive.
SISMA was created in the framework of the European project SpaceInn, which had the purpose to facilitate the access to and the exploitation of helio- and asteroseismological data.

The CoRoT light-curves stored in the SISMA archive allow the simultaneous study of both the photometric and spectroscopic stellar variations. The graph shows the accord between photometric and radial velocity variations in the red-giant star HD178484.

The mean line profiles facilitate the study of stellar variability’s phenomena. The graph shows the mean line profiles time series of the delta Scuti pulsating star HD41641. It is easy to see the line’s distortion due to the stellar pulsations.