A 12-YEAR ACTIVITY CYCLE FOR THE NEARBY PLANET HOST STAR HD 219134.

The nearby (6.5 pc) star HD 219134 was recently shown by Motalebi et al. and Vogt et al. to host several planets, the innermost of which is transiting. We present 27 years of radial velocity (RV) observations of this star from the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program, and 19 years of stellar activity data. We detect a long-period activity cycle measured in the Ca ii SHK index, with a period of 4230 ± 100 days (11.7 years), very similar to the 11 year solar activity cycle. Although the period of the Saturn-mass planet HD 219134 h is close to half that of the activity cycle, we argue that it is not an artifact due to stellar activity. We also find a significant periodicity in the SHK data due to stellar rotation with a period of 22.8 days. This is identical to the period of planet f identified by Vogt et al., suggesting that this RV signal might be caused by rotational modulation of stellar activity rather than a planet. Analysis of our RVs allows us to detect the long-period planet HD 219134 h and the transiting super-Earth HD 219134 b. Finally, we use our long time baseline to constrain the presence of longer period planets in the system, excluding to objects with at 12 years (corresponding to the orbital period of Jupiter) and at a period of 16.4 years (assuming a circular orbit for an outer companion). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]