Image right: This animation depicts the initiation of a solar flare. Scientists think that the twisting and breaking of magnetic field lines lacing through the corona generate the particle acceleration and flaring. The flare involves a shower of electrons raining down from the corona onto the photosphere, heating the coronal gas to temperatures usually encountered only deep inside the sun. The X-ray emission can last up to a few minutes on the sun on II Pegasi it lasted for several hours. The flare itself is a burst of radiation across much of the electromagnetic spectrum, from low-energy radio waves through high-energy X-rays. The corona's temperature is about two million degrees Fahrenheit, while the sun's surface, called the photosphere, is only about 6,000 degrees. Solar flares on the sun originate in the corona, the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere. This II Pegasi event was our first opportunity to study details of another star's flaring as if it were as close as our sun." "We know much about solar flares on the sun, but these are samples from just one star. "The flare was so powerful that, at first, we thought it was a star explosion," said Osten, a Hubble Fellow. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Scientific Visualization Studio The II Pegasi flare was too distant (fortunately) to image in detail. Had it been from our sun, it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth. except it was one hundred million times more energetic than the sun's typical solar flare. NASA's Swift satellite detected a similar flare from a star system called II Pegasi 135 light-years from Earth.
Image left: This movie shows a solar flare in action, created from a series of NASA TRACE observations in the X-ray waveband in April 2002. Rachel Osten of University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., presents this finding today at the Cool Stars 14 meeting in Pasadena, Calif. Yet in detecting this brilliant flare, scientists obtained direct observational evidence that stellar flares on other stars involve particle acceleration, just like on our sun.
And II Pegasi is at a safe distance of about 135 light-years from Earth. It was about a hundred million times more energetic than the sun's typical solar flare, releasing energy equivalent to about 50 million trillion atomic bombs.įortunately, our sun is now a stable star that doesn't produce such powerful flares. The flare was seen in December 2005 on a star slightly less massive than the sun, in a two-star system called II Pegasi in the constellation Pegasus. The twisting and reconnecting of these loops initiate the flare. Note the bright magnetic loops of matter. Image right: This is a real image of a typical solar flare from our sun, from September 2005, captured in the X-ray waveband by NASA's TRACE satellite. The flare was perhaps the most energetic magnetic stellar explosion ever detected. Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite have spotted a stellar flare on a nearby star so powerful that, had it been from our sun, it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth. Monster Stellar Flare Seen by NASA Scientists Dwarfs All Others + NASA Home > Mission Sections > SWIFT Mission > Gamma-Ray Bursts NASA - Monster Stellar Flare Seen by NASA Scientists Dwarfs All Others The site requires that JavaScripts be enabled in your browser.