The Starburst Program

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This project will use in tandem two large radio antennas located at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory to monitor a sample of nearby active stars for radio bursts associated with large stellar flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The necessary custom electronic hardware to process the signals will be constructed, and advantage will be taken of new receivers on the telescopes; all of these are designed to permit broad spectral bandwidth observations, which give high sensitivity, as well as high time resolution. The search for radio bursts will be carried out in a real-time, automated fashion.Scientific targets include young stellar objects (YSOs), close binary stars, and active M dwarf stars. The target sample consists of 15 stars, and these will be monitored for 2.5 years, accumulating 500 hours of observation time per star. This will give a unique data set for assessing coronal and interplanetary conditions around active stars and their orbiting planetary systems. There will be simultaneous low frequency coverage for every target observed, by using a new low frequency array at Owens Valley. The result will be observations spanning 2 decades of frequency (28 MHz to 6 GHz), thus tracking coronal mass ejection events from the stellar corona into the interplanetary medium. Simultaneous optical spectroscopic observations will also be made, as well as triggered VLBI follow-up observations.These observations should register substantial broader impacts in the form of public interest, which is particularly keen around the current time of Solar maximum. The project team is active in public outreach lectures and other activities. Funding for this project is being provided by NSF's Division of Astronomical Sciences through its Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation program.