The Impact of Stellar Activity on Our Ability to Detect Exoplanets

Stellar magnetism of cool stars is expected to manifest on the stellar surfaces in a variety of ways that are analogous to those on the Sun. The localized concentrations of stellar magnetic fields can suppress convection leading to a variety of regions brighter or darker than the photosphere. The presence, rotational modulation, and long-term evolution of these dark and bright regions impacts observational data such that their signatures have been mistaken for exoplanets. Here, the impact of starspots, faculae, plages, networks, and magnetic activity cycles on observational data will be reviewed, including photometric, spectroscopic, and interferometric observations. Researchers are actively developing new techniques to understand the contributions of stellar activity in observational data in hopes of mitigating it and revealing exoplanets. Some of the latest efforts to account for the impact of stellar activity on exoplanet detection will also be discussed here