RISE: Using Precision Photometry of Sun-Like Stars to Estimate Long-Term Solar Variability

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Nine years' observations of 33 sunlike stars offer tantalizing evidence that the sun's potential for long-term brightness variability is significantly understate by measurements of solar irradiance variations since 1978. These stellar observations also show that changes in visual brightness and magnetic activity are not simply correlated, as has been presumed in reconstructions of long-term solar irradiance fluctuations from sunspot and other solar data. This project will extend the observational time series for three years (that is, comparable with one full "solar" cycle), providing a unique unbroken set of precision photometric measurements at 472 nm and 551 nm. In close collaboration with the separately funded HK program at Mount Wilson Observatory that monitors the chromospheric (magnetic) activity of these stars, the PI will compare magnetic and brightness variations of the sun and similar stars in an effort to characterize long-term solar variability. Stellar and solar brightness variations are clearly linked to chromospheric activity, but the relationship is complex and requires further elucidation. The PI will establish the morphology and statistics of long-term brightness variability with particular regard to the question of poorly understood phenomena such as the solar "Maunder minimum." #