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<\/p>\nThe Sun is both creator and destroyer. The one that can foster life one second and eliminate it the next. Most people are familiar with the harmful and hazardous effects the Sun can have to life on Earth if solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections, and their associated radiation, are delivered in just the right way and at high enough intensities.<\/p>\n
But those same sets of destructive forces could actually have helped jump start and aid the formation of life on Earth. Therefore, searching for solar flares from other stars could provide critical insight into those systems\u2019 potential to support life.<\/p>\n
The issue is that solar flares \u2014 sudden bright flashes of luminosity near the solar surface in proximity to sunspot groups that release x-rays and streams of highly energetic particles \u2014 from other stars are very hard to see given the distances involved.<\/p>\n
So if we can\u2019t see solar flares on other stars that easily, scientists examined ways to detect the activity without actually seeing it. As it turns out, this is where sunspots, darkened patches on the Sun\u2019s surface of concentrated magnetic flux, become useful because of what they are almost always precursors to: solar flares.<\/p>\n
But even then, seeing sunspots on other stars as we do on the Sun is again not possible given the distance and resolution capabilities of telescopes.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing solar observing satellites, we can resolve signatures on the surface [of the Sun] 100 miles wide,\u201d said Dr. Vladimir Airapetian, co-author on the study and astrophysicist at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cOn other stars you might only get one pixel showing the entire surface.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Sunspot AR2529, imaged in April 2016. (Credit: NASA)<\/p>\n
This is where the dark nature of sunspots becomes useful as a dark surface will lower the amount of light reaching the observer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to know what a sunspot region would look like if we couldn\u2019t resolve it in an image,\u201d said Dr. Shin Toriumi, lead author on the paper published in Astrophysical Journal<\/i> and scientist at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).<\/p>\n
Spaceflight history books (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n To do this, Dr. Toriumi and the team turned to the Sun and data from NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory and the joint JAXA, NASA, U.K. Hinode mission. \u201cWe used the solar data as if it came from a distant star to have a better connection between solar physics and stellar physics.\u201d<\/p>\n The international team observed sunspots at low-resolution to give the Sun the appearance of being trillions of kilometers away and created a simulated view of what other stars would look like if sunspots were present on their surface.<\/p>\n This required finding a period when Hinode and the Solar Dynamics Observatory witnessed the transit of a single isolated sunspot group across the surface of the Sun, which was highly complicated given there are usually either multiple groupings of sunspots during solar maximum periods or no sunspots at all during solar minimums. Rarely is there ever just one.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the team identified a few instances of such events in a decade\u2019s worth of data from Hinode and the Solar Dynamics Orbiter. What the investigation revealed is that when observed in the visible light spectrum, the amount of light reaching the observing telescope was dimmer when the sunspot group was in the center of the star and brighter when the group was on either side.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n