NuSTAR Observations of Bright X-ray Flares from Young Stellar Objects

Bright x-ray flares are observed to occur on young stellar objects (YSOs) and are presumed to be driven by similar processes as those seen on our sun. Observations of the flaring activity of YSOs can add to our understanding of the early lives of stars and the development of planetary systems. In particular, x-ray observations of these stellar flares are essential for probing the youngest stars, as these stars are most obscured by dense molecular clouds. One such cloud complex of YSOs, rho Ophiuchi, has been a past target for soft x-ray (SXR) missions, including Chandra and XMM-Newton. However, the energy ranges covered by these missions drop off prior to the hard x-ray (HXR) regime, where the crossover to a dominant nonthermal component could be observed. Whether or not this nonthermal emission is strong enough to be observed could then be an indicator of how large an influence these flares have on the surrounding protoplanetary disk. To begin investigating this HXR emission, two 50ks observations of rho Ophiuchi have been taken with the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which is optimized over the energy range of 3-79 keV. Multiple stellar flares have been identified in the observations; here we present the preliminary analysis, including light curves and spectra, of the brightest of these flaring events. We explore the implications of the data for flaring activity of YSOs and compare the results to typical flaring activity of the sun.