Stellar flares from blended and neighbouring stars in Kepler short cadence observations
Abstract
We present the results of a search for stellar flares from stars neighbouring the target sources in the Kepler short cadence data. These flares have been discarded as contaminants in previous surveys and therefore provide an unexplored resource of flare events, in particular high-energy events from faint stars. We have measured M dwarf flare energies up to 1.5 × 1035 erg, pushing the limit for flare energies measured using Kepler data. We have used our sample to study the flaring activity of wide binaries, finding that the lower mass counterpart in a wide binary flares more often at a given energy. Of the 4430 flares detected in our original search, 298 came from a neighbouring star, a rate of 6.7 ± 0.4 per cent for the Kepler short cadence light curves. We have used our sample to estimate a 5.8 ± 0.1 per cent rate of false positive flare events in studies using Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite short cadence data.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- April 2021
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stab166
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2101.07269
- Bibcode:
- 2021MNRAS.502.2033J
- Keywords:
-
- stars: flare;
- stars: low-mass;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society