The magnetic activity vs. age in binary systems with a white dwarf and a main sequence star. The study: “Main-sequence companions to white dwarfs – II. The age-activity-rotation relation from a sample of Gaia common proper motion pairs” of A. Rebassa-Mansergas (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) recently appeared on MNRAS

Several stellar phenomena and evolutionary processes are connected to their magnetic fields. The mechanisms that allow stars to produce their magnetic fields depend on their internal structure and stellar properties. One dominant property is stellar rotation: the faster stars rotate, the more intense their magnetic field and magnetic activity. Since stellar rotation declines with age, it is not surprising that

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The study: “Estimating Magnetic Filling Factors from Simultaneous Spectroscopy and Photometry: Disentangling Spots, Plage, and Network” of T. W. Milbourne (Harvard University), recently appeared on ApJ, present two new methods that allow astronomers to estimate the filling factor of magnetic active regions

About 20% of the exoplanets discovered so far (October 2021) were found with measurements of radial velocity (data from https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/). This method is based on spectroscopic observations of stars with planets, from which it is possible to measure the Doppler effect produced by periodic oscillations of the star, due to the gravitational attraction between star and planet along the orbit of

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Pulsations in the solar corona. The study: “Large-amplitude quasi-periodic pulsations as evidence of impulsive heating in hot transient loop systems detected in the EUV with SDO/AIA” of F. Reale (UNIPA/INAF-OAPA) recently appeared on ApJ

Solar corona is made of plasma at million degrees. The mechanism responsible for the heating of the corona, which is the outer part of the solar atmosphere, is still one of the unsolved problems of solar physics. For comparison, the plasma in the photosphere is on average at about 5600 degrees. It is widely accepted that the responsible for heating

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Espulsioni coronali di massa osservati per la prima volta in una stella diversa dal Sole. Pubblicato su Nature Astronomy l’articolo: “A stellar flare-coronal mass ejection event revealed by X-ray plasma motions” di C. Argiroffi (UNIPA/OAPA)

Il Sole è caratterizzato da un’intensa attività magnetica che produce fenomeni transienti come i brillamenti, le espulsioni di massa coronali, le macchie solari, le protuberanze, etc… In particolare, le espulsioni di massa coronali (CME, coronal mass ejection) sono i fenomeni di origine magnetica più energetici che osserviamo sul Sole. Le CME consistono in improvvise espulsioni di plasma altamente ionizzato dalla

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Accretion funnels connecting the young stars in Orion and their protoplanetary disks. The study “X-Ray Flare Oscillations Track Plasma Sloshing along Star-disk Magnetic Tubes in the Orion Star-forming Region” of F. Reale published on ApJ

di Mario Giuseppe Guarcello    ( segui mguarce)     A recent study by a team of researchers of INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Palermo, the University of Palermo, and the University of Madrid, recently published on the Astrophysical Journal, shows that  enormous flares in the young stars in Orion are due to large magnetic loops connecting the stars and their protoplanetary disks,

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INAF-OAPA researchers observe for the first time X-ray emission from an active region in a B star

The study of the X-ray emission from stars provides an unmatched view of those energetic phenomena occurring in stars. In massive stars (O and early B stars), soft X-ray photons (less energetic than about 1 keV) are emitted from shocks in stellar winds. More energetic photons (the hard X-ray emission) is due to colliding stellar winds in binary systems or

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Osservata per la prima volta emissione ai raggi X associata ad una regione attiva in una stella B. Pubblicato su A&A lo studio: “Detection of magnetic field in the B2 star ρ Ophiuchi A with ESO FORS2” di I. Pillitteri (INAF-OAPA)

di Mario Giuseppe Guarcello    ( segui mguarce)     Lo studio dell’emissione di raggi X dalle stelle offre molte diagnostiche di fenomeni stellari ad alta energia. Nelle stelle massive (di classe spettrale O le B più calde) raggi X “soffici” (con energia generalmente minore di 1keV, corrispondente a temperature minori di 10 milioni di gradi) sono emessi in shock nei

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