The purpose of this project is to gather flare information on sun-like stars using the K2 data. The statistical analyses of these flares will help heliophysicists determine the frequency of "super" flares on our sun. A super flare is any stellar flare that emits energy above 10^36 erg.
I began by downloading the entire K2 catalog from https://archive.stsci.edu/k2/epic/search.php into an excel spreadsheet. Unfortunately, this website only allows the user to download 10,000 rows at a time. To download the entire catalog at once, I used http://mastweb.stsci.edu/kplrcasjobs/default.aspx. This website requires one to make an a account and uses SQL to retrieve desired data. The K2 data is labeled "K2_ktc_epic_science_v" however this includes all objects seen by K2. To search for only stars I used the syntax:
select * from k2_ktc_epic_science_v
where objtype = 'star'
This can also be downloaded into an excel spreadsheet.
The K2 data is separated by "campaigns". Each campaign lasts roughly 80 days and gathers information on a certain section of space using RA and DEC coordinates.
Here is a plot of the overlapping stars in campaign 4 (red) and campaign 13 (blue)
This was plotted by using the following excel spreadsheet and MATLAB code
Once the data is downloaded into an excel spreadsheet, this MATLAB code can sort through and filter out all stars that do not meet "sun like" criteria.
Once the desired stars are identified, I used the file upload feature on https://archive.stsci.edu/k2/hlsp/k2sff/search.php to download the light curve data points. I write a simple MATLAB code to plot these points.
Here is an example of a plotted light curve for K2 ID 201140550
K2 ID 201134185
A further analysis of these light curves will show the presence of stellar flares. I am in the process of putting together a code that will read any light curve and reveal the presence of a super flare.