The Variability of Radio Stars

arXiv:2606.27706 · astro-ph.SR · Submitted 2026-06-26 · Read on arXiv

Laura N. Driessen, Alex Andersson, Joseph R. Callingham, Barnali Das, Jakob van den Eijnden, Tara Murphy, Kovi Rose, Joshua Pritchard, Miguel Pérez-Torres

Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia · Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK · Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098, XH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands · National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune University Campus, Pune-411007, India · Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098, XH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands · ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery · Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space \& Astronomy, Epping, NSW, Australia · Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO, Space \& Astronomy, Epping, NSW, Australia · Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

astro-ph.SR

Submitted: 2026-06-26

Comments: Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII), 2026 (arXiv:2606.20366). Report-no:AASKAII/Driessen01. Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII) outlines the transformative scientific advances that will be enabled by the SKA telescopes. 15 pages, 6 figures

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

The gist: Stellar radio emission is highly variable with stellar flares lasting from milliseconds to hours.

Terminology

Abstract

Stellar radio emission is highly variable with stellar flares lasting from milliseconds to hours. For some stars, their flares or bursts can repeat once every couple of hours, while other stars may flare only once in hundreds of hours of observing. Some stars and stellar systems vary slowly over months to years. In this chapter we present the current methods for identifying radio stars and the important role that variability plays in these detection methods. We highlight that radio stars are the second most common radio variable object in image-plane searches for radio variable sources. We also present our predictions for the number of stars both the SKA-mid and SKA-low AA* arrays could detect based on searches using SKA pathfinders and precursors.

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