EDEN project: Flare activity of nearby M-dwarf Wolf 359

DOI

We report the flare activity of Wolf359, the fifth closest star to the Sun and a candidate exoplanet-hosting M-dwarf. The star was a target of the Kepler/K2 mission and was observed by the EDEN project, a global network of 1-2m class telescopes for detection and characterization of rocky exoplanets in the habitable zones of late M-dwarfs within 50 light year from the solar system. In the combination of the archived K2 data and our EDEN observations, a total of 872 flares have been detected, 861 with the K2 (860 in the short-cadence and 18 in the long-cadence data, with 17 long-cadence events having short-cadence counterparts) and 11 with EDEN. Wolf 359 has relatively strong flare activity even among flaring M-dwarfs, in terms of the flare activity indicator (FA) defined as the integrated flare energy relative to the total stellar bolometric energy, where FA={sum}E_f_/{int}L_bol_dt~8.93x10^-5^ for the long-cadence flares, whereas for K2 short cadence and EDEN flares, the FA values are somewhat larger, FA~6.67 x 10^-4^ and FA~5.25x10^-4^, respectively. Such a level of activity, in accordance with the rotation period (P_rot_), suggests the star to be in the saturation phase. The size of the starspots is estimated to be at least 1.87%{+/-}0.59% of the projected disk area of Wolf359. We find no correlation of FA with the stellar rotational phase. Our analysis indicates a flare frequency distribution in a power-law form of dN/dE{prop}E^-{alpha}^ with {alpha}=2.13{+/-}0.14, equivalent to an occurrence rate of flares E_f_>~10^31^erg about once per day and of superflares with E_f_>~10^33^erg approximately 10 times per year. These superflares may impact the habitability of system in multiple ways, the details of which are topics for future investigations.

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.51620011
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/162/11
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/162/11
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/162/11
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/162/11
Provenance
Creator Lin C.-L.; Chen W.-P.; Ip W.-H.; Apai D.; Bixel A.; Boyle R.; Chavez J.P.,Espinoza N.; Gibbs A.; Gabor P.; Henning T.; Mancini L.; Rackham B.V.,Schlecker M.; Dietrich J.; Socia Q.J.; Keppler M.; Bhandare A.; Haberle M.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2021
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Exoplanet Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy