Hitting the Earth, energy from solar flares and coronal mass ejections can disrupt communication equipment and create a spectacular aurora.īut the Proxima super-flare spotted by Evryscope was well beyond a regular stellar flare. Flares from the sun are typically between 1027 – 1032 erg of energy, released in a few tens of minutes.įor comparison, a hydrogen bomb releases the equivalent of about 10 megatons of TNT or a mere 4 × 1023 erg. They are often accompanied by a large expulsion of plasma from the star known as a “coronal mass ejection”. What Evryscope spotted was a flare from Proxima Centauri that was so bright that the dim red dwarf star became briefly visible to the naked eye.įlares are the sudden brightening in the atmosphere of a star that release a strong burst of energy. This set of observations were taken with Evryscope an array of small telescopes that was watching stars in the southern hemisphere. Yet observations taken around the same time as the La Silla Observatory discovery were painting a very different picture of Proxima Centauri. Its existence was also inspiration for privately funded projects to develop faster space travel for interstellar distances. Sitting 4.2 light years from our sun, a journey to Proxima Centauri b is still prohibitively long.īut as our nearest neighbor, the exoplanet is a prime target for the upcoming generation of telescopes that will attempt to directly image small worlds.
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