Related papers: Placing the Solar System in its Astrophysical Cont…

The record of solar activity is reviewed here with emphasis on peculiarities. Since sunspot positions tell us a lot more about the solar dynamo than the various global sunspot numbers, we first focus on the records of telescopic…

One of the basic questions of solar research is the nature of the Sun. We show here how the plasma nature of the Sun leads to the self-generation of solar activity. The release of magnetic, rotational, gravitational, nuclear energies and…

Magnetic activity cycles are an important phenomenon in both the Sun and other stars. The shape of the solar cycle is commonly characterised by a fast rise and a slower decline, but not much attention has been paid to the shape of cycles in…

Gravitational lensing of invisible streaming matter towards the Sun could be the explanation of the puzzling solar flares and the unexplained solar emission in the EUV. Assuming that this invisible matter has some form of interaction with…

The processing of the galactic coordinates of 3543 solar flares with a magnitude of 2 or more has shown that the distribution of these fast-going processes on the surface of the "nonrotating" Sun is irregular and non-random what testifies…

We report detailed analysis of high-resolution spectra of nine high velocity metal-rich dwarfs in the solar neighborhood. The stars are super metal-rich and 5 of them have [Fe/H]>=+0.4, making them the most metal-rich stars currently known.…

The 18O/17O ratio of the Solar System is 5.2 while that of the interstellar medium (ISM) and young stellar objects is ~4. This difference cannot be explained by pollution of the Sun's natal molecular cloud by 18O-rich supernova ejecta…

A calibration of H-alpha as both a chromospheric diagnostic and an age indicator is presented, complementing the works previously done on this subject (Herbig 1985, Pasquini & Pallavicini 1991. The chromospheric diagnostic was built with a…

The Kepler mission provides an exciting opportunity to study the lightcurves of stars with unprecedented precision and continuity of coverage. This is the first look at a large sample of stars with photometric data of a quality that has…

We constrain the intrinsic architecture of Kepler planetary systems by modeling the observed multiplicities of the transiting planets (tranets) and their transit timing variations (TTVs). We robustly determine that the fraction of Sun-like…

Kepler is a space telescope that searches Sun-like stars for planets. Its major goal is to determine {\eta}_Earth, the fraction of Sunlike stars that have planets like Earth. When a planet 'transits' or moves in front of a star, Kepler can…

The elemental composition of the Sun's hot atmosphere, the corona, shows a distinctive pattern that is different than the underlying surface, or photosphere (Pottasch 1963). Elements that are easy to ionize in the chromosphere are enhanced…

Earth is the only planet known to harbor life, therefore we may speculate on how the nature of the Sun-Earth interaction is relevant to life on Earth, and how the behavior of other stars may influence the development of life on their…

We consider the formation of solar infrared (2-6 micron) rovibrational bands of carbon monoxide (CO) in CO5BOLD 3D convection models, with the aim to refine abundances of the heavy isotopes of carbon (13C) and oxygen (18O,17O), to compare…

It is shown that the description of the solar cycle that takes into account the odd zonal harmonic of the solar magnetic field allows us to deepen our knowledge of two important aspects of the solar activity. First, to clarify and expand…

We present analyses of variability in the red giant stars in the metal-poor globular cluster NGC6397, based on data obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. We use an non-standard data reduction approach to turn a 23-day observing run…

I present a review of chemical evolution models of the solar neighborhood. I give special attention to the necessary ingredients to reproduce the observed [Xi/Fe] ratios in nearby metal and super metal rich stars, and to the chemical…

We present measurements of [Fe/H] for six M supergiant stars and three giant stars within 0.5 pc of the Galactic Center (GC) and one M supergiant star within 30 pc of the GC. The results are based on high-resolution (lambda / Delta lambda…

In this thesis, I explore two topics in exoplanet science. The first is the prevalence of Earth-size planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. To determine the occurrence of planets having different sizes, orbital periods, and other properties, I…

Around 16% of the solar-like stars in our neighbourhood show IR-excesses due to debris discs and a fraction of them are known to host planets. We aim to determine in a homogeneous way the metallicity of a sample of stars with known debris…