Such sudden bursts of energy happen on the Sun all the time

May 30, 2015 10:00 GMT  ·  By

You know how our Sun quite often flexes its atmosphere and lets out sudden bursts of energy? Well, it looks like such events, known to astronomers as flares, happen on other fiery orbs as well. 

For instance, it was not too long ago that, using the Alma telescope, a team of researchers zoomed in on a colossal flare that happened on the surface of Mira, a red giant star some 420 light-years away in the constellation Cetus.

In a report published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics earlier this month, astronomers at the Chalmers University of Technology describe red giants like Mira as dying stars that are losing their outer layers.

They further detail that, although the scientific community is quite familiar with red giant stars and their behavior, the flare documented by the Alma telescope on Mira came as a surprise.

Since dying stars are known to seed the cosmos with all the elements needed to make new, young stars and even planets, the team plan to further study Mira and try to determine how it's dying is changing the Milky Way.

Specifically, the scientists are interested in learning whether magnetic fields like the ones characteristic of our Sun also influence the behavior of red giants and, in doing so, dictate which elements leave them and when.

Red giant star Mira is all the more interesting to study seeing how it does not stand alone in the cosmos but instead has a hot white dwarf star as a companion. Together, the two orbs form a binary system.

“Mira is a key system for understanding how stars like our sun reach the end of their lives, and what difference it makes for an elderly star to have a close companion,” study co-author Sofia Ramstedt said in a statement.

Flare documented on the Sun earlier this year, on May 5, shown in different wavelenghts
Flare documented on the Sun earlier this year, on May 5, shown in different wavelenghts

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Representation of the flare observed on red giant star Mira
Flare documented on the Sun earlier this year, on May 5, shown in different wavelenghts
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