Exoplanets in the Antarctic Sky. III. Stellar Flares Found by AST3-II (CHESPA) within the Southern CVZ of TESS

• Published in: The Astronomical Journal
• Main Authors: Liang, En-Si, Zhang, Hui, Yu, Zhouyi, Yang, Ming, Zhou, Ji-lin, Ashley, Michael C.B., Cui, Xiangqun, Du, Fujia, Fu, Jianning, Gong, Xuefei, Gu, Bozhong, Hu, Lei, Hu, Yi, Jiang, Peng, Liu, Huigen, Lawrence, Jon, Liu, Qiang, Li, Xiaoyan, Li, Zhengyang, Ma, Bin, Mould, Jeremy, Shang, Zhaohui, Sun, Tianrui, Suntzeff, Nicholas B., Tao, Charling, Tian, Qiguo, Tinney, C.G., Uddin, Syed A., Wang, Lifan, Wang, Songhu, Wang, Xiaofeng, Wei, Peng, Wright, Duncan, Wu, Xuefeng, Wittenmyer, Robert A., Xu, Lingzhe, Yang, Shihai, Yu, Ce, Yuan, Xiangyan, Zheng, Jessica, Zhou, Hongyan, Zhu, Zhenxi
• Other Authors: Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (CPPM), Aix Marseille Université (AMU)-Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules du CNRS (IN2P3)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: [PHYS]Physics [physics]; Antarctic; Jupiter; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02542798; https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ab7ea8

International audience The CHinense Exoplanet Searching Program from Antarctica is a ground-based wide-field photometric survey using the AST3 and CSTAR telescopes located at Dome A, Antarctica. Blessed with the unparalleled observing conditions on the highest point of the Antarctic plateau, three remotely controlled, fully automatic telescopes (AST3-I, AST3-II, and CSTAR-II) carried out continuous high-precision photometric surveys through the polar nights of 2016 and 2017. During the observing seasons of 2016, a total of 26,578 light curves were obtained for stars within the area of the southern continuous viewing zone of TESS, covering an i-band magnitude range from 7.5 to 15. At m i = 10, photometric precision reaches ∼2 mmag, allowing possible discoveries of sub-Jupiter-size exoplanets. Here we report 20 stellar flares with i-band energies larger than 1034 erg detected in the 2016 data set of AST3-II, all from different sources. We model the stellar flares and calculate the durations, amplitudes, energies, and skewnesses. The flare properties and the stellar properties of their sources are presented in this work.