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#1 MegaFlare from DwarfStar

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:34 pm
by LadyTevar
[quote="CNN"]
Link
Monster flare erupts from young star


EV Lacertae seemed like an unremarkable star. A teenager in star time – just a few hundred million years old – it shines with one percent of our sun’s light and contains only a third of the sun’s mass.

Suddenly, a flare with the power of thousands of solar flares erupted from this red dwarf. It was the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than the sun. NASA’s Swift satellite detected the flare on April 25, the agency just announced.

“Our sun was maybe as active as this for the first few to 10 million years,â€

#2

Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 4:39 pm
by rhoenix
This site is a blog site, though it lists EV Lacertae as 16 light years away, and ordinarily a magnitude-10 star, far below naked-eye visibility.

With that in mind, considering its flare was enough to have certain sensors shut down due to danger of overloading (again, from a magnitude-10 star 16 light years away), that seems really damn impressive.

#3

Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 1:50 pm
by Destructionator XV
Its telescope was probably focused right on the star, magnifying the light a great deal when it shut down.

Still one big light.