red dwarf tagged posts

A groundbreaking study has revealed that red dwarf stars can produce stellar flares that carry far-ultraviolet (far-UV) radiation levels much higher than previously believed. This discovery suggests that the intense UV radiation from these flares could significantly impact whether planets around red dwarf stars can be habitable. Led by current and former astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), the research was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Few stars have been thought to generate enough UV radiation through flares to impact planet habitability...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has imaged the inner workings of a dusty disk surrounding a nearby red dwarf star...

Satellite: Gaia Copyright: ESA/Gaia/DPAC

A thin gap has been discovered on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (HRD), the most fundamental of all maps in stellar astronomy, a finding that provides new information about the interior structures of low mass stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, according to a study led by astronomers at Georgia State University.

Just as a graph can be made of people with different heights and weights, astronomers compare stars using their luminosities and temperatures. The HRD is a “family portrait” of the stars in the Galaxy, where stars such as the Sun, Altair, Alpha Centauri, Betelgeuse, the north star Polaris and Sirius can be compared...

Conceptual illustration. A key outcome from the current studies was that planets orbiting red dwarfs may have remarkably similar characteristics to planets orbiting solar-type stars. Credit: Tokyo Institute of Technology

A new planet near the habitable zone around a bright cool star. Scientists report the existence of 15 new planets – including one ‘super-Earth’ that could harbor liquid water – orbiting small, cool stars near our solar system. These stars, known as red dwarfs, are of enormous interest for studies of planetary formation and evolution. One of the brightest red dwarfs, K2-155 that is around 200 light years away from Earth, has 3 transiting super-Earths, which are slightly bigger than our own planet. Of those 3 super-Earths, the outermost planet, K2-155d, with a radius 1...