Related papers: Stellar activity mimics a habitable-zone planet ar…
Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars comprise about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar…
During the solar magnetic activity cycle the emergence latitudes of sunspots change, leading to the well-known butterfly diagram. This phenomenon is poorly understood for other stars as starspot latitudes are generally unknown. The related…
A new method for determining the stellar rotation period is proposed here, based on the detection of starspots during transits of an extra-solar planet orbiting its host star. As the planet eclipses the star, it may pass in front of a…
Of the roughly 3000 neutron stars known, only a handful have sub-stellar companions. The most famous of these are the low-mass planets around the millisecond pulsar B1257+12. New evidence indicates that observational biases could still hide…
We analyzed the host stars of the present sample of confirmed planets detected by Kepler and Kepler Objects of Interest (KOI) to compute new photometric rotation periods and to study the behavior of their angular momentum. Lomb-Scargle…
Extra-solar planet search programs require high-precision velocity measurements. They need to study how to disentangle radial-velocity variations due to Doppler motion from the noise induced by stellar activity. We monitored the active K2V…
In 2010, Bakos and collaborators discovered a Neptune-sized planet transiting the K-dwarf HAT-P-11 every five days. Later in 2018, Yee and collaborators reported an additional Jovian-mass companion on a nine year orbit based on a decade of…
We present new observations of the multi-planet system HIP~41378, a bright star ($V$ = 8.9, $K_s$ = 7.7) with five known transiting planets. Observations in Campaign 5 of the K2 mission showed multiple transits of two Neptune-sized bodies…
Stellar activity influences radial velocity (RV) measurements and can also mimic the presence of orbiting planets. As part of the search for planets around the components of wide binaries performed with the SARG High Resolution Spectrograph…
Long-term photometric measurements in a sample of ultrashort-period (P~0.5 days or less) single and binary stars of different interior structures are analysed. A loose correlation exists between the rotational rate and cycle lengths of…
It has been argued that a substellar companion may significantly influence the evolution of the progenitors of sdB stars. Recently, the bright sdB star HD 149382 has been claimed to host a substellar (possibly planetary) companion with a…
We report on the first star discovered to host a planet detected by radial velocity (RV) observations obtained within the CARMENES survey for exoplanets around M dwarfs. HD 147379 ($V = 8.9$ mag, $M = 0.58 \pm 0.08$ M$_{\odot}$), a bright…
We present the results from the discovery and study of ~3000 chromospherically active giant and subgiant stars toward the Galactic bulge. We find that these stars are predominantly RS CVn binaries with rotation periods between 10 and 100…
Subdwarf B (sdB) stars are thought to be core helium burning stars with low mass hydrogen envelopes. In recent years it has become clear that many sdB stars lose their hydrogen through interaction with a binary companion and continue to…
Stellar activity can be a source of radial velocity (RV) noise and can reproduce periodic RV variations similar to those produced by an exoplanet. We present the vigorous activity cycle in the primary of the visual binary HD200466, a system…
We report the discovery of three extrasolar planets that transit their moderately bright (Vmag = 12-13) host stars. WASP-44b is a 0.89-MJup planet in a 2.42-day orbit around a G8V star. WASP-45b is a 1.03-MJup planet which passes in front…
A 10.24 days Neptune-mass planet was recently announced to orbit the nearby M2 dwarf Gl 176, based on 28 radial velocities measured with the HRS spectrograph on the Hobby-Heberly Telescope (HET). We obtained 57 radial velocities of Gl 176…
Based on the Ca\,II H and K lines observed by LAMOST, we employ the photospheric ($R'_{\rm HK}$) and basal ($R^+_{\rm HK,L}$) flux calibrated chromospheric activity indices to examine the relationship between chromospheric activity and the…
Radial velocity curves for 15 bright subdwarf B binary systems have been measured using high precision radial velocity measurements from high S/N optical high-resolution spectra. In addition, two bright sdB stars are discovered to be radial…
The ``Neptunian ridge'' is a recently identified peak in the frequency of planets with sizes between that of Neptune and Saturn orbiting their host stars with periods between 3 and 6 days (A. Castro-Gonz\'alez et al. 2024). These planets…