From today (August 11th) up until Friday the yearly Perseids meteor shower will have its peak. This phenomenon is not only interesting for amateur astronomers, professional astronomers will be observing them as well.
STORIES
In Humans of ASTRON we share stories about the people at ASTRON. Who are the people behind the discoveries and innovations and also, who are the people that make sure that everything runs smoothly? In this second part of the series, we’ll be sharing the story of Jorrit Siebenga, who joined ASTRON in 2017 as research instrument maker.
Throughout the history of astronomy, women have played essential roles towards astronomical breakthroughs. In this article we highlight but a few of these women identified in history from 1600 to the modern era.
In Humans of ASTRON we share stories about the people at ASTRON. Who are the people behind the discoveries and innovations and also, who are the people that make sure that everything runs smoothly? In this second part of the series, we’ll be sharing the story of Emanuela Orrù, support scientist at ASTRON since 2012.
DAILY IMAGE
Evidence of a Massive Stellar Storm on a Nearby Star
© Olena Shmahalo/Callingham et al.
One of the big goals in astronomy over the coming decades is to find a truly habitable world around another star. We’ve already made incredible progress, discovering thousands of exoplanets. Many of these planets also orbit within the so-called “Habitable Zone” - the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.
But there’s still a huge unknown: how often do stars hurl super-heated plasma into space? Our own Sun does this through Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which can trigger brilliant aurorae, but also knock out satellites and telecommunications here on Earth. Thankfully, Earth’s magnetic field shields us from the worst of it.
For other stars, though, we had no idea how frequent or powerful these eruptions could be. That’s where our study comes in. CMEs produce a unique radio fingerprint known as a Type II burst. Using the incredibly sensitive LOFAR radio telescope (operated by ASTRON) and advanced software developed by the brilliant team at Observatoire de Paris | PSL, we searched for these bursts from over 100,000 stars... and we got lucky! 🎯
The signal we detected was far more luminous and energetic than anything ever seen from our Sun - a truly colossal stellar storm. If a planet were sitting in that star’s habitable zone, its atmosphere would be in serious trouble.
This discovery adds a vital piece to the complex puzzle of finding potentially habitable worlds beyond our own. 🌍✨
I am incredibly fortunate to have a great team around me that made this work possible. In particular, the software developed by Cyril Tasse, Philippe Zarka, and team were fundamental in getting to this point.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09715-3
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