Astronomers observe auroras first outside our solar system – the Sun of San Luis

EFE

Madrid, SPAIN .- A group of astronomers discovered for the first time outside our solar system, the existence of auroras, similar to the northern or southern on Earth, in a brown dwarf star and a power phenomenon 10,000 times higher, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

LSR J1835 + 3259 located 18 light years from Earth is the name where astronomers have discovered brown dwarf star the first dawn view a stellar object beyond the solar system.

The auroras are one of the most beautiful phenomena that can be seen in the Earth’s sky and is caused by the interaction of the planet’s magnetic field with the solar wind, but which has observer status in the star is due to a different process.

This discovery has implications for the study of exoplanets, the study conducted by experts from the universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Brown dwarfs, also called “failed stars” are difficult to detect and remain difficult to classify, because it has a lot of mass to be planets but too small to shoot inside the thermonuclear reactions that feed the stars.

Dr Stuart Littlefair, University of Sheffield said that these results are further proof that we must think brown dwarfs as “reinforced rather than as failed stars planets”.

“We already knew that brown dwarfs have atmospheres with clouds, as though the planets are made of minerals that form rocks on Earth, but now we know that brown dwarfs also have powerful auroras,” he said.

The international team of researchers looked at J1835 + 3259 LSR from the radio astronomy observatory Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, as well as to the Hel Palomar and Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

Their observations show that cooler stars and brown dwarfs have atmospheres that support external auroral activity, rather than the type of magnetic activity seen in other hottest and most massive stars.

This discovery reveals an important difference between the magnetic activity of stars more massive and registered in brown dwarfs and planets.

“All magnetic activity we have seen in this object can be explained by powerful auroras, “said Gregg Hallinan, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and director of the study adding that this indicates that the auroral activity replaces the solar corona in brown dwarfs and smaller objects.

The aurora scientists observed seemed driven by a dynamo process little understood and similar to that seen in large planets in the solar system.

“What we have seen in that object appears the same phenomenon that we have observed, for example, on Jupiter, but hundreds of times more powerful, “Hallinan said,” suggesting that it may be possible to detect this type of activity on extrasolar planets, many of which have a mass significantly greater than that of Jupiter. “

Littlefair, meanwhile, said that” sometimes the best of a scientific result is simply discover something exciting and new. “

The northern lights “They are one of the most spectacular and beautiful things that can be seen” and as always wanted to see one and so far has not had the opportunity, Littlefair considered a “irony” have uncovered a much larger and more powerful than those on Earth aurora “many light years away.” EFE / AM