Radio flare from FF Tau
ATel #4294; Anna M. M. Scaife (University of Southampton), James Owen (CITA), Barbara Ercolano (University Observatory, Ludwig-Maximillans University; Excellence Cluster Universe), Clare Rumsey (Cavendish Astrophysics, University of Cambridge)
on 3 Aug 2012; 07:11 UT
Credential Certification: Anna Scaife (A.Scaife@soton.ac.uk)
Subjects: Radio, Young Stellar Object, Pre-Main-Sequence Star
The Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Large Array (AMI-LA) reports a radio flare in the emission of the Class III object FF Tau. The flare occurred on 2012 July 24th (mJD 56132.2) with a flux density of 3.24 +/-0.03 (rms) +/-0.16 (absolute calibration uncertainty) mJy at a frequency of 16GHz (1.8cm). The emission had a rising spectrum with a power-law index of 0.34+/-0.21, constrained between 13.88 - 17.63GHz.
Subsequent observations on 2012 July 30th (mJD 56138.4) indicated a diminished flux density of 1.1+/-0.09 mJy: a decrease of 72 per cent.
Previous radio observations of FF Tau have constrained only an upper limit on its flux density of <0.5mJy at 5GHz (O'Neal, Feigelson, Mathieu & Myers 1990). The flare reported here was detected serendipitously during a science program with the AMI-LA; this object does not currently form part of an AMI-LA monitoring campaign.
