Related papers: A simple method to estimate radial velocity variat…

We present photometry of HD 189733 during eight transits of its close-in giant planet, and out-of-transit photometry spanning two years. Using the transit photometry, we determine the stellar and planetary radii and the photometric…

Starspots and their movements on stellar surfaces enable investigating the mechanisms of stellar magnetic activity. Information on the spot distribution and differential rotation provide important constraints for the behaviour of stellar…

Radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of surface convection in low-mass stars can be exploited to derive estimates of i) the efficiency of the convective energy transport in the stellar surface layers; ii) the convection-related photometric…

Radial velocity (RV) searches for Earth-mass exoplanets in the habitable zone around Sun-like stars are limited by the effects of stellar variability on the host star. In particular, suppression of convective blueshift and brightness…

We provide an overview of stellar variability in the first quarter of data from the Kepler mission. The intent of this paper is to examine the entire sample of over 150,000 target stars for periodic behavior in their lightcurves, and relate…

For distant stars, as observed by the NASA Kepler satellite, parallax information is currently of fairly low quality and is not complete. This limits the precision with which the absolute sizes of the stars and their potential transiting…

Context. CoRoT light curves have an unprecedented photometric quality, having simultaneously a high signal-to-noise ratio, a long time span and a nearly continuous duty-cycle. Aims. We analyse the light-curves of four bright targets…

Radial velocity (RV) searches for exoplanets have surveyed many of the nearest and brightest stars for long-term velocity variations indicative of a companion body. Such surveys often detect high-amplitude velocity signatures of objects…

We conducted speckle imaging observations of 53 stellar systems that were members of long-term radial velocity (RV) monitoring campaigns and exhibited substantial accelerations indicative of planetary or stellar companions in wide orbits.…

(Abridged) To this purpose, in the course of the thesis work we prepared a suitable software in order to use the same spectra acquired for radial velocity determinations (i.e., with the spectrum of the Iodine cell imprinted on) to measure…

[ABRIDGED] In this study, we set out to a) demonstrate the sensitivity to <4 R_E transiting planets with periods of a few days around our program stars, and b) improve our knowledge of some astrophysical properties(e.g., activity, rotation)…

The measurement of Doppler velocities in spectroscopic solar observations requires a reference for the local frame of rest. The rotational and radial velocities of the Earth and the rotation of the Sun introduce velocity offsets in the…

Since 1999, a radial velocity survey of 179 red giant stars is ongoing at Lick Observatory with a one month cadence. At present ~20-100 measurements have been collected per star with an accuracy of 5 to 8 m/s. Of the stars monitored, 145…

Solar simulations and observations show that the detection of long-period Earth-like planets is expected to be very difficult with radial velocity techniques in the solar case because of activity. The inhibition of the convective blueshift…

Thanks to missions like Kepler and TESS, we now have access to tens of thousands of high precision, fast cadence, and long baseline stellar photometric observations. In principle, these light curves encode a vast amount of information about…

We present the first results of the application of supervised classification methods to the Kepler Q1 long-cadence light curves of a subsample of 2288 stars measured in the asteroseismology program of the mission. The methods, originally…

We investigate the variability properties of main sequence stars in the first month of Kepler data, using a new astrophysically robust systematics correction, and find that 60% of stars are more variable then the active Sun. We define low…

The census of planets around M dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood meets two challenges: detecting the best targets for the future characterisation of planets with ELTs, and studying the statistics of planet occurrence that are crucial to…

The discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets using radial velocity (RV) measurements is limited by noise sources from the surfaces of host stars. Current techniques to suppress stellar magnetic activity rely on decorrelation…

Inhibition of the convective blueshift in active regions is a major contribution to the radial velocity variations, at least for solar-like stars. A common technique to correct for this component is to model the RV as a linear function of…