| Name: John Clifford D Souza |
| Affiliation: St. Joseph's University |
| Conference ID: ASI2026_834 |
| Title: TESS Variability of Solar Analogs in Gaia DR3 Golden Sample |
| Abstract Type: Poster |
| Abstract Category: Stars, Interstellar Medium, and Astrochemistry in Milky Way |
| Author(s) and Co-Author(s) with Affiliation: John Clifford D Souza(St. Joseph's University, Bengaluru - 560027, India), Ravinder Kumar Banyal(Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru - 560034, India) |
| Abstract: Light curves from the Kepler and TESS missions enable measurements of stellar photometric variability, providing insight into magnetic activity and surface phenomena in Sun-like stars. Photometric variability is also relevant for exoplanet studies, as increased stellar variability can reduce the detectability of planetary transits. Previous studies based on Kepler data suggest that the Sun is less photometrically variable than many solar analogs—stars similar to the Sun in effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity.
In this work, we investigate the photometric variability of solar analogs using archival TESS light curves, leveraging the mission’s broader sky coverage relative to Kepler. We construct a sample of well-characterized solar analogs from Gaia Data Release 3, cross-match it with the TESS Input Catalog, and quantify variability using the variability range metric, Rvar. Solar variability is measured using 11 years of data from the VIRGO instrument onboard SOHO, segmented into 27-day intervals for consistency with TESS observations.
We compare the distribution of stellar variability with that of the Sun and find that, within this sample, the Sun lies among the least photometrically variable stars, with approximately 20% of solar analogs exhibiting lower variability than the solar value. |
