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Published November 1, 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

A Dedicated System for Coordinated Radio and Optical Monitoring of the Space Weather of Young, Solar-type Stars

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 3. ROR icon Rice University
  • 4. Real-Time Radio Systems Ltd, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH6 3LU, UK
  • 5. ROR icon Arizona State University
  • 6. ROR icon New Jersey Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon George Mason University
  • 8. ROR icon University of New Mexico

Abstract

Low-frequency radio emission in the form of type II and III bursts is a direct indicator of plasma motion in the solar corona and interplanetary medium. However, detecting equivalent events on solar analogs requires thousands of observing hours and complementary multiwavelength observations to constrain the origin of the radio emission. To address this, we have begun the Study of Space Weather Around Young Suns (SWAYS), a multiwavelength program for monitoring space weather around young, solar-type stars. This program currently focuses on five solar-type stars spanning 100–800 Myr in age. It includes a dedicated observing scheme from the recently upgraded Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) Long Wavelength Array (LWA) operating at 13–86 MHz to search for stellar analogs of solar type II and III bursts. We have built the optical photometry instrument Flarescope to operate simultaneously with OVRO-LWA observations to investigate whether radio bursts are accompanied by magnetic reconnection events. We analyze the performance based on a 1 hr observation of π1 UMa, which shows that Flarescope can reach submillimagnitude precision through nondifferential photometry on π1 UMa in 60 s integration times when diffusing the light with engineered diffusers. A small field of OVRO-LWA cross-correlated data centered on π1 UMa reaches a noise level of 740 mJy at 10 s integration time, consistent with confusion noise. With this precision, we should be able to detect large optical flares and related radio bursts that may indicate accompanying coronal mass ejections and energetic particle events. In this paper, we present the design, framework, and performance of the SWAYS program.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number AST-1828784, the Simons Foundation (668346, JPG), the Wilf Family Foundation, and Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation. A part of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and funded through the JPL Researchers on Campus program.

We would also like to acknowledge Eric Blackhurst and Cameron Vittiglio of PlaneWave who helped with the installation of the Flarescope mount and OTA. Their assistance with diagnosing and remedying hardware problems was invaluable to Flarescope’s operations and the quality of its performance.

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Additional details

Funding

National Science Foundation
AST-1828784
Simons Foundation
668346
Wilf Family Foundations
Mt. Cuba Astronomical Foundation
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
JPL Researchers on Campus Program -

Dates

Accepted
2025-08-13
Available
2025-10-28
Published

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published