High-Cadence B-Band Search for Optical Flares on BY Dra

Volume 43 number 2 (2015)

Download this article (pdf)

Gary A. Vander Haagen

Stonegate Observatory, 825 Stonegate Road, Ann Arbor, MI; garyvh2@gmail.com

Abstract

The high-cadence search at 50 and 100 samples/sec of BY Dra revealed very short-duration B-band flares. A statistical criterion was used to isolate the short-duration optical flares from random photon events. Three flares, ranging in duration from 60 to 130 ms, with peaks 0.30–0.43 magnitude above the mean, were detected within the 80.2 hours of periodic monitoring from July 2012 through October 2015. This represents a flare rate of 0.04 flares/hour.