Vary, Vary, Little Star…Or Don’t, If You’re the Sun
Why is our Sun so anomalously stable in brightness compared to other stars? The authors of today’s paper decided to run some simulations to find out.
Fraught with Spots
If we don’t understand starspots, we won’t understand exoplanet atmospheres.
HAT-P-11: A Spotted Star
How an exoplanet’s transits reveal starspots on HAT-P-11.
Cool Stars Have Magnetic Fields Too
While the Sun is an excellent starting point in a quest to understand magnetism, the authors of today’s paper want more. They take advantage of something only relatively cool stars can have in their atmospheres to study magnetic fields: molecules in starspots.
Spots and Tantrums: A Moody X-ray Binary
What do you call two stars hurtling around each other with bursts of X-rays every few decades? An X-ray transient, of course! This special flavor of X-ray binary features a neutron star or black hole together with a low-mass star.
New Insight Into A Potentially Evaporating Planet
There is a small planet candidate, likely rocky, that looks like it’s being vaporized. The authors of this paper show evidence that this evaporation might be related to stellar activity, not just the planet’s proximity to its star.