Strong Shear and High-Amplitude Activity Cycle in a Metal-Rich Solar Analogue

Over an 11-year cycle the Sun changes its brightness by less than 0.1%. However, it is an open question how strong the Sun's photometric variability was in the distant past. One way to answer that is to study other Sun-like stars and compare their photometric variability with that of the Sun. In a recent paper, we presented ground-based spectroscopic observations of a 7.4-year cycle in the solar analogue HD 173701. Complemented with observations from the Kepler space telescope, those data constitute the most complete set of observations of a stellar cycle ever obtained for any Sun-like star. They reveal that HD 173701 has strong solar-like differential rotation and a magnetic cycle comparable to the cycle generated by the solar dynamo, but with a resulting variability twice the amplitude of that observed in the Sun.