Astronomers Observe Superflare on Nearby Red Dwarf AD Leonis | Astronomy – Sci-News.com

A team of astronomers in Japan has detected 12 stellar flares, including a so-called superflare, on AD Leonis, an M-dwarf star located just 16 light-years away in the constellation of Leo.
An artists impression of the flaring red dwarf AD Leonis, also known as Gliese 388 and BD+20 2465. Image credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
Stellar flares are sudden explosions that emanate from the surfaces of stars, including our own Sun, said lead author Dr. Kosuke Namekata, a researcher in the Department of Astronomy at Kyoto University.
On rare occasions, extremely large superflares will occur. They result in massive magnetic storms, which when emitted from our Sun can significantly affect the Earths technological infrastructure.
Dr. Namekata and colleagues observed the flaring star AD Leonis using Kyoto Universitys 3.8-m Seimei Telescope, NASAs Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), and the Spectroscopic Chuo-university Astronomical Telescope (SCAT), with the collaboration of the OISTER (Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research) program.
The scientists detected a total of 12 flares, including ten flares in hydrogen alpha (H) light, four X-ray and four optical flares.
One of these eruptive events was a superflare with a total energy of 2*1033erg — about 20 times more powerful than those emitted by our Sun.
Our analyses of the superflare resulted in some very intriguing data, Dr. Namekata said.
Light from excited hydrogen atoms of the superflare exhibited an amount of high-energy electrons roughly one order of magnitude greater than typical flares from our Sun.
More information on these fundamental stellar phenomena will help us predict superflares, and possibly mitigate magnetic storm damage here on Earth, said senior author Dr. Kazunari Shibata, a scientist in the Department of Astronomy and the Astronomical Observatory at Kyoto University.
We may even be able to begin understanding how these emissions can affect the existence — or emergence — of life on other planets.
The findings were published today in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.
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Kosuke Namekata et al. Optical and X-ray observations of stellar flares on an active M dwarf AD Leonis with the Seimei Telescope, SCAT, NICER, and OISTER. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan, published online July 9, 2020; doi: 10.1093/pasj/psaa051

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