Flares And Flashes: The Future

Extract

The goal of this round-table discussion is to bring up issues which may be of mutual interest to those working on specific flare and variable stars and those performing wide-field searches for, among other things, counterparts to gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Admittedly, however, trying to unify the interests of the flare people and the GRB people will be an interesting task. Many of the presentations this week have been devoted to future instrumentation and future modes of observations, but there have been also interesting discussions of specific questions regarding flare stars, variable stars and GRBs. Certainly, wide-field observations of the night sky will continue for the foreseeable future: there are a lot of instruments running now, and there are many instruments being planned. Most of these observations cover many square degrees of sky for long periods with a reasonable magnitude limit. How could these observations could be modified or improved to also allow useful data on on variable stars or flare stars to be taken? What sort of information, statistics, periodicities could be gleaned from wide-field searches that will be happening in the future and searches that are going on today? Are there methods in common use by one group of observers that may be useful to the other?

The speakers in this session have volunteered to give a short presentation on issues which may benefit from discussion within this group.