Doppler imaging stars with moderate rotation - The SPOT distribution on Sigma Geminorum

It is demonstrated that the Doppler imaging technique is capable of recovering the cool spot distributions on stars rotating as slowly as 15 km/s. The technique is employed to derive the spot distribution on the RS CVn star Sigma Gem. The spot distribution on this star consists of five spots which are in a band centered near latitude + 55 deg and which may be indicative of an active latitude band. Although Sigma Gem exhibits high-latitude spot activity, it shows no evidence for a polar spot like those seen on virtually every other RS CVn star. The different spot morphology of Sigma Gem may be due to the long period of the star.