Stellar activity for every TESS star in the Southern sky
Abstract
Although TESS will search for Earths around more than 200,000 nearby stars, the life-impacting superflare occurrence of these stars remains poorly characterized. We monitor long-term stellar flare occurrence for every TESS star in the accessible sky at 2-minute cadence with the CTIO-based Evryscope, a combination of twenty-four telescopes, together giving instantaneous sky coverage of 8000 square degrees. In collaboration with Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array (LWA) all-sky monitoring, Evryscope also provides optical counterparts to radio flare, CME, and exoplanet-magnetosphere stellar activity searches. A Northern Evryscope will be installed at Mount Laguna Observatory, CA in collaboration with SDSU later this year, enabling stellar activity characterization for the full TESS target list and both continuous viewing zones, as well as providing 100% overlap with LWA radio activity. Targets of interest (e.g. Proxima Cen, TRAPPIST-1) are given special focus. We are currently sensitive to stellar activity down to 1% precision at g' ~ 10 and about 0.2 of a magnitude at g' ~ 15. With 2-minute cadence and a projected 5-year timeline, with 2+ years already recorded, we present preliminary results from an activity characterization of every Southern TESS target.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #231
- Pub Date:
- January 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AAS...23131003H