Mining the time axis with TRON – II. MeerKAT detects a stellar radio flare from a distant RS CVn candidate

Medium-time-scale (minutes to hours) radio transients are a relatively unexplored population. The wide field-of-view and high instantaneous sensitivity of instruments such as MeerKAT provides an opportunity to probe this class of sources, using image-plane detection techniques. The previous letter in this series describes our project and associated Transient Radio Observations for Newbies (TRON) pipeline designed to mine archival MeerKAT data for transient and variable sources. In this letter, we report on a new transient, a radio flare, associated with Gaia DR3 6865945581361480448, a G type star, whose parallax places it at a distance of 1330 pc. Its duration and high degree of circular polarization suggests electron cyclotron maser instability as the mechanism, consistent with an RS CVn variable.