- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/757/94
- Title:
- Solar flares observed with GOES and AIA
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/757/94
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We explore the spatio-temporal evolution of solar flares by fitting a radial expansion model r(t) that consists of an exponentially growing acceleration phase, followed by a deceleration phase that is parameterized by the generalized diffusion function r(t){prop.to}{kappa}(t-t_1_)^{beta}/2^, which includes the logistic growth limit ({beta}=0), sub-diffusion ({beta}=0-1), classical diffusion ({beta}=1), super-diffusion ({beta}=1-2), and the linear expansion limit ({beta}=2). We analyze all M- and X-class flares observed with Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite and Atmospheric Imaging Assembly/Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the first two years of the SDO mission, amounting to 155 events. We find that most flares operate in the sub-diffusive regime ({beta}=0.53+/-0.27), which we interpret in terms of anisotropic chain reactions of intermittent magnetic reconnection episodes in a low plasma-{beta} corona. We find a mean propagation speed of v=15+/-12km/s, with maximum speeds of v_max_=80+/-85km/s per flare, which is substantially slower than the sonic speeds expected for thermal diffusion of flare plasmas. The diffusive characteristics established here (for the first time for solar flares) is consistent with the fractal-diffusive self-organized criticality model, which predicted diffusive transport merely based on cellular automaton simulations.
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- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/253/29
- Title:
- Solar flare variability from GOES-15 Ly{alpha} obs.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/253/29
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The Lyman-alpha (Ly{alpha}) line of neutral hydrogen at 121.6nm is by far the brightest emission line in the vacuum ultraviolet spectral range of the Sun. The emission at this line could be a major energy input to the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere, strongly impacting the geospace environment. The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, starting with GOES-13, began to carry a multichannel Extreme UltraViolet Sensor (EUVS) with one channel (E-channel) targeting the Ly{alpha} line. In the present work, we produce a Ly{alpha} flare catalog from the GOES-15/EUVS-E data between 2010 April 8 and 2016 June 6 with an automatic flare detection algorithm. This algorithm is designed to search events at various scales and find their real start and end times. Based on the obtained flare list, statistics on the temporal behavior such as the duration, rise, and decay times, and the event asymmetries of Ly{alpha} flares is presented. On average (defined by the median of the distributions), the duration, rise and decay times of the flares were estimated to be 20.8 minutes, 5.6 minutes, and 14.2 minutes, respectively. We also discuss the frequency distributions of the peak flux and the fluence of Ly{alpha} flares, both of which reveal power-law behaviors with power-law indices of 2.71+/-0.06 and 2.42+/-0.06, respectively, implying that more flares are accumulated at small scales and these small-scale events play an important role in explaining the violent solar energy release.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/891/54
- Title:
- Solar X-ray flares and associated CME speeds & widths
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/891/54
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We recently repeated an earlier analysis by Garcia showing that large (>=M3.0) solar X-ray flares associated with solar energetic particle (SEP) events have significantly lower peak X-ray flux ratios R=(0.04-0.5nm)/(0.1-0.8nm), proxies for flare peak temperatures, than those without SEP events. As we expect SEP events to be produced by shocks ahead of fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a smaller R for an X-ray flare of a given peak flux Fp should also be more likely to be accompanied by a fast (Vcme>1000km/s) CME. We confirm this expectation, examine the role played by the ratios R in correlations between Fp and CME speeds Vcme, and then compare CME widths W, Vcme, and R with each other. We consider an apparent conflict between a global scaling model of eruptive events showing Vcme scaling with higher R and our confirmation that the Garcia analysis implies that faster CMEs are associated with flares of lower R. The R values are examined for 16 large flares of the well-studied AR 12192, for which nearly all flares had no associated CMEs. Those flares share the same high values of R as other active region (AR) flares with no CMEs. We also find that small (<M3.0) flares of filament eruptions leading to SEP events share the lower R values of larger flares with fast CMEs.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/851/91
- Title:
- Statistical studies of solar white-light flares
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/851/91
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Recently, many superflares on solar-type stars have been discovered as white- light flares (WLFs). The statistical study found a correlation between their energies (E) and durations ({tau}): {tau}{propto}E^0.39^, similar to those of solar hard/soft X-ray flares, {tau}{propto}E^0.2-0.33^. This indicates a universal mechanism of energy release on solar and stellar flares, i.e., magnetic reconnection. We here carried out statistical research on 50 solar WLFs observed with Solar Dynamics Observatory/HMI and examined the correlation between the energies and durations. As a result, the E-{tau} relation on solar WLFs ({tau}{propto}E^0.38^) is quite similar to that on stellar superflares ({tau}{propto}E^0.39^). However, the durations of stellar superflares are one order of magnitude shorter than those expected from solar WLFs. We present the following two interpretations for the discrepancy: (1) in solar flares, the cooling timescale of WLFs may be longer than the reconnection one, and the decay time of solar WLFs can be elongated by the cooling effect; (2) the distribution can be understood by applying a scaling law ({tau}{propto}E^1/3^B^-5/3^) derived from the magnetic reconnection theory. In the latter case, the observed superflares are expected to have 2-4 times stronger magnetic field strength than solar flares.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/151/166
- Title:
- Stellar flares and variables from 2009-2010 CSTAR
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/151/166
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The Chinese Small Telescope Array (CSTAR) carried out high-cadence time-series observations of ~20.1 square degrees centered on the South Celestial Pole during the 2008, 2009, and 2010 winter seasons from Dome A in Antarctica. The nearly continuous six months of dark conditions during each observing season allowed for >10^6^ images to be collected through gri and clear filters, resulting in the detection of >10^4^ sources over the course of three years of operation. The nearly space-like conditions in the Antarctic plateau are an ideal testbed for the suitability of very small-aperture (<20cm) telescopes to detect transient events, variable stars, and stellar flares. We present the results of a robust search for such objects using difference image analysis of the data obtained during the 2009 and 2010 winter seasons. While no transients were found, we detected 29 flaring events and find a normalized flaring rate of 5+/-4*10^-7^flare/hr for late-K dwarfs, 1+/-1*10^-6^flare/hr for M dwarfs and 7+/-1*10^-7^flare/hr for all other stars in our sample. We suggest future small-aperture telescopes planned for deployment at Dome A would benefit from a tracking mechanism, to help alleviate effects from ghosting, and a finer pixel scale, to increase the telescope's sensitivity to faint objects. We find that the light curves of non-transient sources have excellent photometric qualities once corrected for systematics, and are limited only by photon noise and atmospheric scintillation.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/829/23
- Title:
- Stellar flares from Q0-Q17 Kepler LCs
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/829/23
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- A homogeneous search for stellar flares has been performed using every available Kepler light curve. An iterative light curve de-trending approach was used to filter out both astrophysical and systematic variability to detect flares. The flare recovery completeness has also been computed throughout each light curve using artificial flare injection tests, and the tools for this work have been made publicly available. The final sample contains 851168 candidate flare events recovered above the 68% completeness threshold, which were detected from 4041 stars, or 1.9% of the stars in the Kepler database. The average flare energy detected is ~10^35^erg. The net fraction of flare stars increases with g-i color, or decreasing stellar mass. For stars in this sample with previously measured rotation periods, the total relative flare luminosity is compared to the Rossby number. A tentative detection of flare activity saturation for low-mass stars with rapid rotation below a Rossby number of ~0.03 is found. A power-law decay in flare activity with Rossby number is found with a slope of -1, shallower than typical measurements for X-ray activity decay with Rossby number.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/581/A28
- Title:
- Stellar X-ray flares from the 2XMM catalog
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/581/A28
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present a uniform, large-scale survey of X-ray flare emission, based on the XMM-Newton Serendipitous Source Catalogue and its associated data products. Our survey comprises both XMM-targeted active stars and those observed serendipitously in the field-of-view of each observation. The 2XMM Catalogue and the associated time-series ('light-curve') data products have been used as the basis for the survey of X-ray flares from cool stars in the Hipparcos Tycho-2 catalogue. Our sample contains ~130 flares with well-observed profiles; they originate from ~70 stars.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/871/16
- Title:
- Sun active regions from 1976-2017
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/871/16
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The purpose of this paper is to show that large active regions (ARs) with different magnetic configurations have different contributions to short-term and long-term variations of the Sun. As a case study, the complex {delta}-type AR12673 and the simple {beta}-type AR12674 are investigated in detail. Since the axial dipole moment at cycle minimum determines the amplitude of the subsequent cycle and space climate, we have assimilated the individual observed magnetic configurations of these two ARs into a surface flux transport model to compare their contributions to the axial dipole moment D. We find that AR12673 has a significant effect on D at the end of the cycle, making it weaker because of abnormal and complicated magnetic polarities. An initial strongly positive D ends up with a strongly negative value. The flare- poor AR12674 has a greater contribution to the long-term axial dipole moment than the flare-rich AR12673. We then carry out a statistical analysis of ARs larger than 800{mu}Hem (solar hemisphere) from 1976 to 2017. We use the flare index (FI) and define an axial dipole moment index (DI) to quantify the effects of each AR on space weather and space climate, respectively. Whereas the FI has a strong dependence on the magnetic configuration, the DI shows no such dependence. The DI is mainly determined by the latitudinal location and the latitudinal separation of the positive and negative magnetic fluxes of the ARs. Simple ARs have the same possibility as complex ARs to produce big DI values affecting space climate.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/209/5
- Title:
- Superflares of Kepler stars. I.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/209/5
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- By extending our previous study by Maehara et al. (2012, Cat. J/other/Nat/485.478), we searched for superflares on G-type dwarfs (solar-type stars) using Kepler data for a longer period (500 days) than that (120 days) in our previous study. As a result, we found 1547 superflares on 279 G-type dwarfs, which is much more than the previous 365 superflares on 148 stars. Using these new data, we studied the statistical properties of the occurrence rate of superflares, and confirmed the previous results, i.e., the occurrence rate (dN/dE) of superflares versus flare energy (E) shows a power-law distribution with dN/dE{prop.to}E^-{alpha}^, where {alpha}~2. It is interesting that this distribution is roughly similar to that for solar flares. In the case of the Sun-like stars (with surface temperature 5600-6000K and slowly rotating with a period longer than 10 days), the occurrence rate of superflares with an energy of 10^34^-10^35^erg is once in 800-5000yr. We also studied long-term (500 days) stellar brightness variation of these superflare stars and found that in some G-type dwarfs the occurrence rate of superflares was extremely high, ~57 superflares in 500 days (i.e., once in 10 days). In the case of Sun-like stars, the most active stars show a frequency of one superflare (with 10^34^erg) in 100 days. There is evidence that these superflare stars have extremely large starspots with a size about 10 times larger than that of the largest sunspot. We argue that the physical origin of the extremely high occurrence rate of superflares in these stars may be attributed to the existence of extremely large starspots.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/890/46
- Title:
- Superflares on solar-type stars from TESS first year
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/890/46
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Superflares, which are strong explosions on stars, have been well studied with the progress of spacetime-domain astronomy. In this work, we present the study of superflares on solar-type stars using Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) data. Thirteen sectors of observations during the first year of the TESS mission covered the southern hemisphere of the sky, containing 25734 solar-type stars. We verified 1216 superflares on 400 solar-type stars through automatic search and visual inspection with 2 minute cadence data. Our result suggests a higher superflare frequency distribution than the result from Kepler. This may be because the majority of TESS solar-type stars in our data set are rapidly rotating stars. The power-law index {gamma} of the superflare frequency distribution (dN/dE{propto}E^-{gamma}^) is constrained to be {gamma}=2.16+/-0.10, which is a little larger than that of solar flares but consistent with the results from Kepler. Because only seven superflares of Sun-like stars are detected, we cannot give a robust superflare occurrence frequency. Four stars were accompanied by unconfirmed hot planet candidates. Therefore, superflares may possibly be caused by stellar magnetic activities instead of planet-star interactions. We also find an extraordinary star, TIC43472154, which exhibits about 200 superflares per year. In addition, the correlation between the energy and duration of superflares (T_duration_{propto}E^{beta}^) is analyzed. We derive the power-law index to be {beta}=0.42+/-0.01, which is a little larger than {beta} = 1/3 from the prediction according to magnetic reconnection theory.
