Huge cloud of plasma belched out by star 130 light years away

A cloud of plasma ejected by a star 130 light-years away has been detected by a radio telescope on Earth, giving astronomers the first definitive observation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from a star beyond our Sun.

CMEs occur when storms on a star's surface eject bubbles of magnetized plasma into space. Such eruptions from our Sun cause the auroras we see on Earth, but they can also be powerful enough to tear the atmosphere off Venus, which is closer to the Sun and not protected by a magnetic field.

Scientists saw hints at CME on distant stars for decades, but have never been able to prove that the material actually escaped the gravitational and magnetic pull of the stars, rather than simply jumping off the surface before being pulled back in.

Now, Joseph Callingham from the Netherlands Institute of Radio Astronomy and his colleagues used That Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope in the Netherlands to pick up the burst, or radio waves, emitted by a CME as it travels through space. These the signals would only be detectable if the ejection had completely left the star StKM 1-1262 from which it originated.

The team also used the XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope to determine the temperature, rotation and brightness of the nascent star.

Collingham says previous observations suggested CMEs occurred on distant stars, but this new data provides strong evidence for this. “You could argue that there have been hints for 30 years, which is true, but we've never proven it explicitly,” he says. “We say that mass was ejected, lost from the star, and this has always been a matter of debate in the literature.”

The radiation from the ejection would be powerful enough to endanger any nearby life forms. Anthony Yates from the University of Durham, UK, says that greater knowledge of the frequency and magnitude of CMEs from distant stars needs to be incorporated into models of the potential habitability of exoplanets. “If there was an exoplanet, it would be catastrophic for any life on it,” he says.

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