ASPCS
 
Back to Volume
Paper: Spectrally-Resolved Light-curves from an XMM-Newton Survey of Stellar X-ray Flares
Volume: 448, 16th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun
Page: 1019
Authors: Pye, J. P.; Rosen, S. R.
Abstract: The XMM-Newton 2XMM Serendipitous Source Catalogue is being used as the basis for a survey of stellar X-ray flares. As 2XMM (and its successive Data Releases) is the largest X-ray-source catalogue to date, and as X-ray light-curves are produced as standard data products, the catalogue provides an excellent basis for a comprehensive and sensitive survey of stellar flares, both from targeted active stars and from those observed serendipitously in the half-degree diameter field-of-view of each observation. We present recent results from the survey (based around flares from stars in the Hipparcos-Tycho catalogue), focussing on spectrally-resolved, ‘hardness-ratio’ (and hence temperature-sensitive) light-curves, generated as additional data products specifically for our flare survey. Whilst the target stars are mainly well-known coronally-active objects, most of the serendipitously-detected flaring stars have little previously published information, the X-ray flares thus providing the first indication of their highly active nature. The hardness-ratio plots clearly illustrate the temperature variations characteristic of many flares, and provide an easily accessible overview of the data, prior to further analysis such as time-resolved spectral fitting.
Back to Volume