Activity‐Related Radial Velocity Variation in Cool Stars

Abstract

Planets have been detected orbiting several solar-type stars with the use of high-precision radial velocity (vr) measurements. While changes in vr can be measured with an accuracy of a few meters per second, there has been relatively little study of how other astrophysical processes, such as magnetic activity, may affect the observed velocities. In this paper, we use published data and simple models to explore the contributions to vr from two activity-related sources, starspots and convective inhomogeneities, as these features rotate across the disk and evolve in time.