M Dwarfs in SDSS Stripe 82: Photometric Light Curves and Flare Rate Analysis

Abstract

We present a flare rate analysis of 50,130 M dwarf light curves in SDSS Stripe 82. We identified 271 flares using a customized variability index to search ~2.5 million photometric observations for flux increases in the u- and g-bands. Every image of a flaring observation was examined by eye and with a PSF-matching and image subtraction tool to guard against false positives. Flaring is found to be strongly correlated with the appearance of H-alpha in emission in the quiet spectrum. Of the 99 flare stars that have spectra, we classify 8 as relatively inactive. The flaring fraction is found to increase strongly in stars with redder colors during quiescence, which can be attributed to the increasing flare visibility and increasing active fraction for redder stars. The flaring fraction is strongly correlated with |Z| distance such that most stars that flare are within 300 pc of the Galactic plane. We derive flare u-band luminosities and find that the most luminous flares occur on the earlier-type M dwarfs. Our best estimate of the lower limit on the flaring rate (averaged over Stripe 82) for flares with Δu \ge 0.7 magnitudes on stars with u < 22 is 1.3 flares hour^-1 square degree^-1 but can vary significantly with the line-of-sight.

arXiv comment44 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (36)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Photometric Camera
• The u'g'r'i'z' Standard Star Network
• The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS: I. Stellar Number Density Distribution
• NYU-VAGC: a galaxy catalog based on new public surveys
• GAIA: Composition, Formation and Evolution of the Galaxy
• Astrometric Calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A photometricity and extinction monitor at the Apache Point Observatory
• Constraining the Age-Activity Relation for Cool Stars: The SDSS DR5 Low-Mass Star Spectroscopic Sample
• A Full-Sky H-alpha Template for Microwave Foreground Prediction
• SDSS Data Management and Photometric Quality Assessment
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey: Technical Summary
• Stellar SEDs from 0.3-2.5 Microns: Tracing the Stellar Locus and Searching for Color Outliers in SDSS and 2MASS
• The photometric structure of the inner Galaxy
• The Palomar/MSU Nearby Star Spectroscopic Survey III: Chromospheric Activity, M-dwarf Ages and the Local Star Formation History
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Monitor Telescope Pipeline
• Spectroscopic Properties of Cool Stars in the SDSS: An Analysis of Magnetic Activity and a Search for Subdwarfs
• SDSS Standard Star Catalog for Stripe 82: the Dawn of Industrial 1% Optical Photometry
• Low-Mass Dwarf Template Spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Large Synoptic Survey Telescope: Overview
• EUV Flare Activity in Late-Type Stars
• Controlling the False Discovery Rate in Astrophysical Data Analysis
• Are Coronae of Magnetically Active Stars Heated by Flares? II. EUV and X-Ray Flare Statistics and the Differential Emission Measure Distribution
• The Luminosity and Mass Functions of Low-Mass Stars in the Galactic Disk: I. The Calibration Region
• The Deep Lens Survey Transient Search I : Short Timescale and Astrometric Variability
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging of Low Galactic Latitude Fields: Technical Summary and Data Release
• Tracers of Chromospheric Structure I: Observations of Ca II K and H alpha in M Dwarfs
• Exploring the Local Milky Way: M Dwarfs as Tracers of Galactic Populations
• A Second Stellar Color Locus: a Bridge from White Dwarfs to M stars
• The detection of M-dwarf UV flare events in the GALEX data archives
• Multiband photometric detection of a huge flare on the M9 dwarf 2MASSW J1707183+643933
• The ChaMP Extended Stellar Survey (ChESS): Photometric and Spectroscopic Properties of Serendipitously Detected Stellar X-ray Sources

Cited by in corpus (99)

• The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
• The MUSCLES Treasury Survey I: Motivation and Overview
• Kepler Flares I. Active and Inactive M dwarfs
• The Luminosity and Mass Functions of Low-Mass Stars in the Galactic Disk: II. The Field
• Stellar Flares from the First Tess Data Release: Exploring a New Sample of M-dwarfs
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 Spectroscopic M Dwarf Catalog I: Data
• Kepler Flares II: The Temporal Morphology of White-Light Flares on GJ 1243
• The Ultraviolet Radiation Environment Around M dwarf Exoplanet Host Stars
• Gaia Universe Model Snapshot : A statistical analysis of the expected contents of the Gaia catalogue
• A catalogue of rotation and activity in early-M stars
• White-light flares on cool stars in the Kepler Quarter 1 Data
• A White Light Megaflare on the dM4.5e Star YZ CMi
• The MUSCLES Treasury Survey. V. FUV Flares on Active and Inactive M Dwarfs
• Models and Simulations for the Photometric LSST Astronomical Time Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC)
• The flare catalog and the flare activity in the Kepler mission
• Supernovae in the Subaru Deep Field: the rate and delay-time distribution of type Ia supernovae out to redshift 2
• BOSS Ultracool Dwarfs I: Colors and Magnetic Activity of M and L dwarfs
• Time-resolved Ultraviolet Spectroscopy of the M-dwarf GJ 876 Exoplanetary System
• Variability Properties of 4 Million Sources in the $TESS$ Input Catalog Observed with the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope Survey
• The Evolution of Flare Activity with Stellar Age
• Planetary and Other Short Binary Microlensing Events from the MOA Short Event Analysis
• M Dwarf Flares from Time-Resolved SDSS Spectra
• Statistical Properties of Quasi-Periodic Pulsations in White-Light Flares Observed With Kepler
• The High-Energy Radiation Environment Around a 10 Gyr M Dwarf: Habitable at Last?
• Multi-wavelength characterization of stellar flares on low-mass stars using SDSS and 2MASS time domain surveys
• Flare Rates, Rotation Periods. and Spectroscopic Activity Indicators of a Volume-Complete Sample of Mid-to-Late M dwarfs within 15 Parsecs
• Shock Breakout in Type II Plateau Supernovae: Prospects for High Redshift Supernova Surveys
• K2 Ultracool Dwarfs Survey. III. White Light Flares are Ubiquitous in M6-L0 Dwarfs
• Living with a Red Dwarf: Rotation and X-ray and Ultraviolet Properties of the Halo Population Kapteyn's Star
• Influence of Stellar Flares on the Chemical Composition of Exoplanets and Spectra
• The Impact of Metallicity on the Evolution of Rotation and Magnetic Activity of Sun-Like Stars
• Flares in Open Clusters with K2. I. M45 (Pleiades), M44 (Praesepe) and M67
• The GALEX Time Domain Survey I. Selection and Classification of Over a Thousand UV Variable Sources
• Disk Loss and Disk Renewal Phases in Classical Be Stars I: Analysis of Long-Term Spectropolarimetric Data
• Mid-Infrared Variability from the Spitzer Deep, Wide-Field Survey
• Slow blue nuclear hypervariables in PanSTARRS-1
• Four ultra-short period eclipsing M-dwarf binaries in the WFCAM Transit Survey
• The Effects of Close Companions (and Rotation) on the Magnetic Activity of M Dwarfs
• Characterizing a Dramatic $\Delta V\sim -9$ Flare on an Ultracool Dwarf Found by the ASAS-SN Survey
• The largest M dwarfs flares from ASAS-SN
• Three New Eclipsing White-dwarf - M-dwarf Binaries Discovered in a Search for Transiting Planets Around M-dwarfs
• A Search for Fast Optical Transients in the Pan-STARRS1 Medium-Deep Survey: M Dwarf Flares, Asteroids, Limits on Extragalactic Rates, and Implications for LSST
• Refined Metallicity Indices for M Dwarfs Using the SLoWPoKES Catalog of Wide, Low-mass Binaries
• Rotation-activity relations and flares of M dwarfs with K2 long- and short-cadence data
• Reconstructing the Extreme Ultraviolet Emission of Cool Dwarfs Using Differential Emission Measure Polynomials
• The Type Ia Supernova Rate in Redshift 0.5--0.9 Galaxy Clusters
• Periodic Variability of Low-Mass Stars in SDSS Stripe 82
• Probing the Flare Atmospheres of M dwarfs Using Infrared Emission Lines
• The Implications of M Dwarf Flares on the Detection and Characterization of Exoplanets at Infrared Wavelengths
• Ground-Based Submillimagnitude CCD Photometry of Bright Stars Using Snapshot Observations
• A Catalog of M-dwarf Flares with ASAS-SN
• Search for flares and associated CMEs on late-type main-sequence stars in optical SDSS spectra
• A Seven-Day Multi-Wavelength Flare Campaign on AU Mic I: High-Time Resolution Light Curves and the Thermal Empirical Neupert Effect
• Hα Emission Variability in Active M Dwarfs
• Probing the extragalactic fast transient sky at minute timescales with DECam
• The Very Short Period M Dwarf Binary SDSS J001641-000925
• A New Sample of Cool Subdwarfs from SDSS: Properties and Kinematics
• Sagittarius stream 3-d kinematics from SDSS Stripe 82
• Pulsations in M dwarf stars
• iPTF Archival Search for Fast Optical Transients
• The Variable Sky of Deep Synoptic Surveys
• An increased rate of large flares at intermediate rotation periods for mid-to-late M dwarfs
• Photometric transit search for planets around cool stars from the western Italian Alps: A pilot study
• DRAFTS: A Deep, Rapid Archival Flare Transient Search in the Galactic Bulge
• Variable Point Sources in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82. I. Project Description and Initial Catalog (0 h < R.A. < 4 h)
• The UV Emission of Stars in LAMOST Survey I. Catalogs
• A Superflare on YZ Canis Minoris Observed by Seimei Telescope and TESS: Red Asymmetry of H$\alpha$ Emission Associated with White-Light Emission
• A Bayesian method for detecting stellar flares
• The Sloan digital sky survey data release 7 spectroscopic m dwarf catalog iii: The spatial dependence of magnetic activity in the galaxy
• The Factory and the Beehive. IV. A Comprehensive Study of the Rotation X-ray Activity Relation in Praesepe and the Hyades
• The Time-Domain Spectroscopic Survey: Understanding the Optically Variable Sky with SEQUELS in SDSS-III
• Stellar Variability and Flare Rates from Dome A, Antarctica using 2009 and 2010 CSTAR Observations
• Variability Timescales of H$\alpha$ on Active Mid-to-Late M dwarfs
• Liquid Water on Cold Exo-Earths via Basal Melting of Ice Sheets
• The Palomar Transient Factory Sky2Night programme
• The Deeper, Wider, Faster Program: Exploring stellar flare activity with deep, fast cadenced DECam imaging via machine learning
• Identification of Stellar Flares Using Differential Evolution Template Optimization
• Photometric Flaring Fraction of M dwarf Stars from the SkyMapper Southern Survey
• A Challenge to Identify an Optical Counterpart of the Gravitational Wave Event GW151226 with Hyper Suprime-Cam
• M Dwarf Activity in the Pan-STARRS 1 Medium-Deep Survey: First Catalog and Rotation Periods
• Temporal changes of the flare activity of Proxima Cen
• Using Close White Dwarf + M Dwarf Stellar Pairs to Constrain the Flare Rates in Close Stellar Binaries
• Longitudinally Modulated Dynamo Action in Simulated M-Dwarf Stars
• Minute-cadence Observations of the LAMOST Fields with the TMTS: III. Statistic Study of the Flare Stars from the First Two Years
• SNAD catalogue of M-dwarf flares from the Zwicky Transient Facility
• The GAPS programme at TNG XXVI. Magnetic activity in M stars: spectroscopic monitoring of AD Leonis
• Discovering vanishing objects in POSS I red images using the Virtual Observatory
• Magnetic activities and parameters of 43 flare stars in the GWAC archive
• VVVX near-IR photometry for 99 low-mass stars in the Gaia EDR3 Catalog of Nearby Stars
• A rapidly declining transient discovered with Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam
• Science Commissioning of NIHTS: The Near-infrared High Throughput Spectrograph on the Lowell Discovery Telescope
• A Seven-Day Multi-Wavelength Flare Campaign on AU Mic III: Quiescent and Flaring Properties of the X-ray Spectra and Chromospheric lines
• Determining the Nature of Faint X-Ray Sources from the ASCA Galactic Center Survey
• Forecasting Tidal Disruption Events by Binary Black Hole Roulettes
• A Photometric Variability Survey of Field K and M Dwarf Stars with HATNet
• NGTS-EB-8: A double-lined eclipsing M+M binary discovered by citizen scientists
• Young M dwarfs flare activity model: Towards better exoplanetary atmospheric characterisation
• Spatially Dependent Photometric Activity of M dwarfs in the Solar Cylinder
• The largest ground-based catalogue of M-dwarf flares