Planet Creates a Stellar Storm:
First Evidence of an Extra-Solar Planet with a Magnetic Field
(01/04/2004)
Canadian astronomers announced today the first evidence of a magnetic field on a planet outside of our solar system which is also the first observation of a planet heating its star. The report was presented this morning by Ph.D. candidate Evgenya Shkolnik, Dr. Gordon Walker, both of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC and Dr. David Bohlender of the National Research Council of Canada / Herzberg Institute for Astrophysics, Victoria, BC at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta, Georgia. The result may offer clues about the structure and formation of the giant planet.
Star and Planet Tie the Knot (12/05/2006)
Artist's view of the giant exoplanet orbiting Tau Bootis, through the star's magnetic arcs. (credit: David Aguilar, CfA)
Astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on Mauna Kea have announced the discovery of magnetism in a star 50 light-years away. The magnetic field is 100 times weaker than that of a typical refrigerator magnet.
Shane Erno's conception of the flare.
Four 's a Crowd: A Rare Quartet of Stars May Unlock Secrets of Stellar Evolution (01/10/2008)
Astronomers using telescopes on Mauna Kea have found an extremely rare quartet of stars that orbit each other within a region smaller than Jupiter's orbit round the Sun. The quartet appears as a speck of light even when viewed with the world's most powerful telescopes but its spectrum reveals not one, but four distinct stars arranged in two pairs. Astronomers are now struggling to work out whether they could have been born that way, or were forced together by a dense disk of gas in their youth.
Artist's view of the gaseous disk that may have once engulfed and maneuvered the quadruple stellar system into its unusually small orbit. (Credit: Karen Teramura, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii)
The Spinning Magnet of a Sun-like Star(02/12/2008)
An international team of astronomers, which includes University of Hawaii's Evgenya Shkolnik, has just caught a star called tau Bootis flip its north and south magnetic poles. The Sun does this regularly every 11 years, but this is the first time it has been seen on another star. For the sun-like star, tau Bootis, the event likely happens more often than in our Sun, possibly due to its tightly orbiting giant planet speeding up the process.
Artist's view of the spinning magnetic field of the sun-like star tau Boo. (Credit: Karen Teramura, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii)
