Properties of stellar activity cycles

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of stellar activity cycles in stars other than the Sun, based on decades of photometric and spectroscopic data, including recent space-based observations.

Contribution

It synthesizes recent observational findings on stellar activity cycles, highlighting the properties and detection methods of long-term stellar activity in various stars.

Findings

Decades-long datasets reveal diverse stellar activity cycles.

Ca H&K observations provide insights into solar-like star cycles.

Kepler data enables study of starspot sizes and cycle characteristics.

Abstract

The current photometric datasets, that span decades, allow for studying long-term cycles on active stars. Complementary Ca H&K observations give information also on the cycles of normal solar-like stars, which have significantly smaller, and less easily detectable, spots. In the recent years, high precision space-based observations, for example from the Kepler satellite, have allowed also to study the sunspot-like spot sizes in other stars. Here I review what is known about the properties of the cyclic stellar activity in other stars than our Sun.