The Young Solar Analogs Project

Since 2007 we have been conducting spectroscopic monitoring, in Ca II H \& K and the G-band, of a sample of 31 YSAs in order to better understand their activity cycles and variations, as well as the effects of young stars on their solar systems. The targets cover the spectral range of stars most likely to contain Earth analogs, F8-K2, and a broad enough range of ages, 0.3 Gyr - 1.5 Gyr, to investigate how activity level changes with stellar age. In 2011 we began monitoring these stars photometrically in Stromgren-v, Johnson-Cousins B, V, and R, and narrow-band H$\alpha$. To complement these efforts we recently started high-cadence, high-S/N spectroscopy of our program stars with the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, along with high-cadence photometry in order to detect and characterize flare activity. In this talk I will briefly describe our observational methods and present some early results from the project.