Starspot-induced radial velocity jitter during a stellar cycle

Abstract

Late-type stars exhibit cool regions on their surface, the stellar equivalent of sunspots. These dark starspots can also mimic the radial velocity variations caused by orbiting planets, making it at times difficult to distinguish between planets and activity signatures. The amount of spots on the Sun and other cool stars changes cyclically during an activity cycle, which has length varying from about a year to longer than the solar 11 years. In this work we investigate the influence of varying amount of starspots on the sparsely sampled radial velocity observations - which are the norm in the radial velocity studies searching for exoplanets on wide orbits. We study two simulated cases: one with a random spot configuration, and one where the spot occurrence is concentrated. In addition we use Doppler images of young solar analogue V889 Her as a high activity case. Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2014.