J/ApJS/281/52 Flare events in TESS 2min cadence light curves (Wang+, 2025)
Properties of flare quasiperiodic pulsations based on a new TESS flare catalog.
Wang Y., Zhang L.-Y., Su T., Misra P., Han X.L.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 281, 52 (2025)>
=2025ApJS..281...52W 2025ApJS..281...52W
ADC_Keywords: Stars, flare; Photometry; Optical; Stars, giant; Spectral types;
Effective temperatures
Keywords: Stellar flares ; Stellar activity
Abstract:
Stellar flares are important indicators of stellar magnetic activity
and have been widely studied. Detailed studies of flares have raised
new questions. For example, the quasiperiodic pulsation (QPP)
phenomenon in flares challenges standard flare models, yet the
underlying mechanism of this phenomenon remains poorly understood. We
utilize the 2 minute cadence light-curve data from TESS Sectors 1-74
prior to 2024 January 30. By combining the previously published
convolutional neural network-based machine learning flare
identification method with traditional flare detection techniques, we
have obtained a flare sample consisting of 208,280 flare events from
29,280 flare stars. In our flare events sample, flares with rise times
within 10 minutes and decay times within 50 minutes account for more
than 90% of the total number of flares. The proportion of flare stars
is higher in binaries, the main sequence, and stars with KM spectral
types compared to single stars, giants, and stars with spectral types
other than KM. The fitted α index results for the flare
frequency distributions across different evolutionary stages indicate
a general trend of decreasing α index from main-sequence stars
to giants. Except for M-type stars, the α index also gradually
decreases from K-type to O-type stars. Using the flare QPP
identification method, based on the fully convolutional networks
published by previous researchers, we have also identified flare
events with QPP, and through flare parameter constraints, we selected
10,465 flares with QPP features from M-type stars and qualitatively
investigated their correlations with stellar parameters.
Description:
We downloaded the 2 minute cadence TESS light curves from Sectors 1-74
provided by MAST, as of 2024 January 30. The wavelength range of
TESS's operational band is from 600 to 1000nm.
We established a flare sample containing 208,280 flare events, which
were sourced from 29,280 flare stars.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table1.dat 137 502061 Star parameters of TESS objects
table2.dat 140 208280 Parameters of flare events sourced from 29280 stars
from TESS sample
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See also:
IV/38 : TESS Input Catalog - v8.0 (TIC-8) (Stassun+, 2019)
J/A+AS/139/555 : Catalogue and Bibliography of UV Cet stars (Gershberg+ 1999)
J/ApJ/699/649 : Young M dwarfs within 25pc. I. (Shkolnik+, 2009)
J/AJ/141/50 : White-light flares from Kepler (Walkowicz+, 2011)
J/MNRAS/435/2161 : Catalogue of bright (K<9) M dwarfs (Frith+, 2013)
J/ApJS/207/15 : M dwarf flare spectra (Kowalski+, 2013)
J/ApJS/209/5 : Superflares of Kepler stars. I. (Shibayama+, 2013)
J/MNRAS/447/2714 : Flare stars across the H-R diagram (Balona+, 2015)
J/ApJ/812/3 : MEarth M dwarfs rotation & kinematics (West+, 2015)
J/ApJ/833/284 : Quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares (Inglis+, 2016)
J/ApJ/851/91 : Stat. studies of solar white-light flares (Namekata+, 2017)
J/ApJ/866/99 : Radii of KIC stars & planets using Gaia DR2 (Berger+, 2018)
J/other/NatAs/3.760 : Blue supergiants low-freq. gravity waves (Bowman+, 2019)
J/ApJ/871/193 : Chandra & LAMOST study of stellar activity (He+, 2019)
J/A+A/628/A81 : Gaia DR2-based catalogue of 237 Ap stars (Scholz+, 2019)
J/A+A/629/A3 : NGC1326A, 1425 & 4548 supergiants VI mags (Spetsieri+, 2019)
J/ApJS/241/29 : Flare catalog through LC data of Kepler DR25 (Yang+, 2019)
J/MNRAS/494/3596 : Superflares in solar-type stars with TESS (Doyle+, 2020)
J/AJ/159/60 : Flares from 1228 stars in TESS sectors 1+2 (Gunther+, 2020)
J/ApJ/890/46 : Superflares on solar-type stars from TESS 1st yr (Tu+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/505/L79 : Characteristic time of stellar flares (Yan+, 2021)
J/ApJ/926/204 : TESS campaign of low-mass flare stars (Howard+, 2022)
J/ApJ/935/90 : Superflare candidates in ∼72000 G-stars (Tu+, 2022)
J/A+A/668/A167 : Superflares on solar-like stars (Vasilyev+, 2022)
J/A+A/669/A15 : TESS flare events and physical parameters (Yang+, 2023)
J/A+A/686/A239 : Flare morphology with CHEOPS and TESS (Bruno+, 2024)
J/AJ/168/234 : Flares & flaring stars from TESS (Lin+, 2024)
J/A+A/686/A164 : Magnetic activity of radio stars (Wang+, 2024)
J/A+A/694/A161 : Stellar flare morphology with TESS (Seli+, 2025)
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/sector.html : TESS sector information
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 3 A3 --- --- [TIC]
5- 15 I11 --- TIC [101/10005000540] TESS identifier
17- 26 F10.6 deg RAdeg Right ascension in decimal degrees (J2000)
28- 37 F10.6 deg DEdeg Declination in decimal degrees (J2000)
39- 47 F9.6 mag TESSmag [-1.8/21] TESS apparent magnitude
49- 60 F12.6 K Teff [2578.6/75050]? Effective temperature
62- 72 F11.8 [cm/s2] log(g) [-0.5/6.6]? Log of surface gravity
74- 88 F15.9 d Period [0/25960]? Period
90- 99 F10.4 pc Dist [1.3/34785]? Gaia distance
101-106 A6 --- Bin Single or binary star
108-120 A13 --- OType Evolutionary stage ("Main Sequence", "Subgiant",
"Red Giant" or "Supergiant")
122-128 A7 --- SpType Gaia spectral type
130-137 F8.4 --- Rcont [0/149]? Contamination ratio provided
by TESS Input Catalogue
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 3 A3 --- --- [TIC]
5- 15 I11 --- TIC [11182/2055585779] TESS identifier
17- 18 I2 --- Sector [1/74] TESS sector
20- 30 F11.6 d Begin [1325.3/3339.49] Flare start time from
BJD2457000
32- 40 F9.4 d Peak [1325.3/3339.49] Flare peak time from
BJD2457000
42- 52 F11.6 d End [1325.31/3339.52] Flare end time from
BJD2457000
54- 65 F12.7 min Dur [7.99/8684.1] Flare duration
67- 78 F12.7 --- Amp [0.0009/2718.4] Flare amplitude
80- 87 E8.2 10-7J Ebol [3.5e+29/1.3e+40]? Bolometric flare energy;
in erg units
89-102 F14.6 s ED [-242.2/6685232]? Equivalent Duration
104-112 F9.7 --- QPP-prob [7.26e-05/1]? Quasiperiodic pulsation (QPP)
confidence predicted by FCN model
114-124 F11.7 s QPP-per [29.3/299]? QPP period
126-138 E13.6 s e_QPP-per [0/127]? Uncertainty in QPP-period
140 I1 --- QPP-eye [0/1] QPP sample checked by eye
(labeled with 1)
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
License: CC-BY-4.0
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 29-Jun-2026