Author: Lisa Grossman / Source: Science News
BOSTON — For the first time, a stellar eruption called a coronal mass ejection has been spotted fleeing a distant star.
Such outbursts of plasma and charged particles are well-known on the sun, and commonly follow a burst of light called a solar flare (SN Online: 4/17/15). Astronomers had detected flares on other stars, but never a corresponding coronal mass ejection, or CME, until now. The discovery could have implications for the prospects for life on planets in other star systems.
The ejection in question relates to a flare that was actually detected 10 years ago, from a giant star called HR 9024 about 450 light-years from Earth. The star is about three times as massive as the sun and 10 times as wide.
Astronomer Costanza Argiroffi of the University of Palermo in Italy and colleagues found evidence of the star’s outburst using a new method for analyzing data taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Argiroffi told the Cool Stars 20 meeting on August 2.
Argiroffi’s team detected material moving up and down a loop of plasma extending from the star’s surface during the flare by measuring certain X-rays’ Doppler shift — the change in the wavelengths of the X-rays as material moved toward or away…
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