Sunspots are temporarily darkened areas on the sun’s surface that are the result of strong magnetic fields generated by the movement of material inside the sun. In other words, they can indirectly tell us what’s going on inside our home planet. Importantly, these spots are not unique to the Sun—astronomers have observed this behavior in many nearby stellar bodies in the Milky Way. These are often called star spots and can also tell us about the internal structure of their respective stars.
star spots Generally speaking, it can last from a few days to a few months and can migrate on the surface of the star. Tracking behavior sunspot At sun Important because increased sunspot activity is associated with increased emission of charged particles from the Sun, and this activity could have serious consequences for our technology Earth.
Thankfully, the sun’s spot activity occurs on an approximately 11-year cycle, which gives us some indication of when this type of solar weather will occur. recentHowever, astronomers have been tracking the activity of star spots red giant star The irregular behavior of star spots in a star called XX Trianguli suggests it may have more chaotic dynamics inside than our own star
Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the HUN-REN Research Center for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (HUN-REN RCAES) analyzed 2000 observations collected over 16 years using AIP’s STELLA robotic telescope in Tenerife. Multiple high-resolution spectra. This treasure trove of data allowed the researchers to reconstruct 99 time series images showing the evolution of starspots on the surface of XX Trianguli from 2006 to 2022.
A central finding of the study showed that surface changes in starspots on XX Triangular Star do not follow a Sun-like magnetic cycle, which the authors say may be attributed to the non-periodic nature of stellar dynamos – the movement of electrically conductive materials inside stars. Unlike the Sun, XX Trianguli’s generator is likely to be chaotic.
“Sunspots are the best-known manifestation of solar magnetic activity and, together with many other phenomena such as solar flares or solar cycles, can be linked to the dynamo mechanisms operating within the Sun,” co-author Zsolt Kővári explained in a statement.
“Large changes in the brightness of the red giant XX Tri have been observed before, so it is also known that these changes are caused by dark spots that move in and out as the star rotates on its axis for 24 days. These spots are even larger than the entire surface of the sun Even bigger, which is why XX Tri is known as “the most speckled star in the sky,” Kővári said.
The study is also the first to show how extremely large starspots can cause tiny shifts in where stars appear in the sky. While the optical center (optical center) of a uniform (unspotted) star will appear where its geometric center is, a giant starspot can repel the optical center in the opposite direction from its starspot.
For XX Triangulum, which is 630 light-years away from Earth, the optical center of the stellar disk can move up to 10% of the stellar radius relative to its geometric center, resulting in a displacement of 24 microarcseconds in the star’s apparent position. or the diameter of a human hair at 621 miles). While it sounds small, this tiny difference can magnify over vast interstellar distances.
While this research will help astrophysicists understand the behavior of starspots and the internal dynamics that drive them, it is also a reason to be thankful that we orbit a star whose activity is largely predictable run.
The study was published Dec. 4 in the journal Nature Communications.