regular cycle of starspots tagged posts

An artist’s illustration depicts the interior of a low-mass star. Such stars have different interior structures than our Sun, so they are not expected to show magnetic activity cycles. However, astronomers have discovered that the nearby star Proxima Centauri defies that expectation and shows signs of a seven-year activity cycle. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

In August astronomers announced that the nearby star Proxima Centauri hosts an Earth-sized planet (called Proxima b) in its habitable zone. At first glance, Proxima Centauri seems nothing like our Sun. It’s a small, cool, red dwarf star only 1/10 as massive and 1/1000 as luminous as the Sun. However, new research shows that it is sunlike in one surprising way: it has a regular cycle of starspots.

Starspots (like sunspots) are dark blotches...