Hide and Seek Planets
Is CoRoT-7d real, or is it stellar activity masquerading as a planet? Haywood et al. build a noise model to analyze CoRoT-7’s activity to find out.
Linking Stellar Age, Rotation, and Magnetic Activity
We have repeatedly seen how Kepler goes above and beyond its original mission of finding exoplanets. Today’s paper is no exception.
Lessons from radio transits
We are used to thinking about planet transits in visible wavelengths. What can we learn from planet transits in the radio band? Today, we discuss what these transits might tell us about the magnetic activity and the atmosphere of a star.
This star lives in exciting times, or, How did Betelgeuse make that funny shape?
Sometimes we see strange shapes when we look through our fancy telescopes and we’re left wondering how they formed. How did the rings and “pearls” of SN1987A form? Or the hexagonal cloud pattern on Saturn? The star Betelgeuse – famous for being Orion’s left shoulder – presents another unusual geometric appearance.
M Dwarfs Are Not Passé
This paper delves into some of the physical properties of early M dwarfs (M0-M4.5), focusing on chromospheric/magnetic activity and rotation. The authors present a catalog of activity and rotation for 334 early M dwarfs.
Planets, stars, and their magnetic interaction
This paper investigates the interaction between close-in (semimajor axis a<0.15AU) massive planets (a.k.a. “hot Jupiters'') and their host (late-type) stars. Two possible mechanisms for interaction are tidal and magnetic, with the focus of this paper being the latter. The pioneering work on the topic of stellar activity enhancement (such as dark spots, faculae, etc) due to planet interaction is by Cuntz et al. (2000). You can see related contributions about stellar activity on previous astrobites posts.