Related papers: ACTIN: A tool to calculate stellar activity indice…
Stellar activity is the main limitation to the detection of Earth-twins using the RV technique. Despite many efforts in trying to mitigate the effect of stellar activity using empirical and statistical techniques, it seems that we are…
In the search for planets orbiting distant stars the presence of stellar activity in the atmospheres of observed stars can obscure the radial velocity signal used to detect such planets. Furthermore, this stellar activity contamination is…
The Kepler mission has been providing high-quality photometric data leading to many breakthroughs in the exoplanet search and in stellar physics. Stellar magnetic activity results from the interaction between rotation, convection, and…
Stellar parameters are required in a variety of contexts, ranging from the characterisation of exoplanets to Galactic archaeology. Among them, the age of stars cannot be directly measured, while the mass and radius can be measured in some…
Differentiating between active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity and star formation in z ~ 2 galaxies is difficult because traditional methods, such as line ratio diagnostics, change with redshift while multi-wavelength methods (X-ray, radio,…
Long-term stellar activity variations can affect the detectability of long-period and Earth-analogue extrasolar planets. We have, for 54 stars, analysed the long-term trend of five activity indicators: log$R'_\mathrm{{HK}}$, the…
Actin is a filamentary protein which has many remarkable properties making it an ideal system for the study of the dynamics and mechanics of semi-flexible polymer solutions and gels; actin has a persistence length of over 10 microns and can…
Our knowledge of magnetic activity of stars is mostly based on the study of the Sun and some spectroscopic surveys of a few hundreds of stars. However, the detailed mechanisms of the solar magnetic activity cycle are not fully understood.…
The use of the spectral subtraction technique allows measurements of chromospheric activity in late-type stars across several activity indicators, such as H$\alpha$ and the other Balmer lines in the visible, He I D3 and Na I D1, D2, Ca II H…
The CoRoT satellite has made available high precision photometric observations of a large number of stars of different spectral types. Continuous photometric time series allow the characterization of stellar microvariability in a systematic…
Having a need to perform differential photometry for tens of thousands stars in a several square degrees field, we developed Astrokit program. The software corrects the star brightness variations caused by variations of atmospheric…
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…
The orbital properties of stars in the disk are signatures of their formation, but they are also expected to change over time due to the dynamical evolution of the Galaxy. Stellar orbits can be quantified by three dynamical actions, J_r,…
We present the results of a program to identify so far unknown active nuclei (AGN) in galaxies. Candidate galactic nuclei have been selected for optical spectroscopy from a cross-correlation of the ROSAT all sky survey (RASS) bright source…
Precision radial velocity (RV) measurements continue to be a key tool to detect and characterise extrasolar planets. While instrumental precision keeps improving, stellar activity remains a barrier to obtain reliable measurements below 1-2…
(Abridged) We develop a novel technique to identify active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and study the nature of low-luminosity AGNs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This is the first part of a series of papers and we develop a new, sensitive…
Stellar activity poses one of the main obstacles for the detection and characterisation of small exoplanets around cool stars, as it can induce radial velocity (RV) signals that can hide or mimic the presence of planetary companions.…
The ever increasing level of precision achieved by present and future radial-velocity instruments is opening the way to discovering very low-mass, long-period planets (e.g. solar-system analogs). These systems will be detectable as…
We have acquired high-resolution echelle spectra of 225 F6-M5 type stars in the southern hemisphere. The stars are targets or candidates to be targets for the Anglo-Australian Planet Search. CaII HK line cores were used to derive activity…
[Abridged] Context. Stellar activity is an important source of systematic errors and uncertainties in the characterization of exoplanets. Most of the techniques used to correct for this activity focus on an ad hoc data reduction. Aims. We…