Speaker
Description
The importance of stellar magnetic activity to research space weather is increasingly recognised. Long-term monitoring campaigns in the radio regime remain sparse, but are necessary to observe stellar radio bursts, radio flares or potentially interactions with the magnetic fields of exoplanets.
The binary system EQ Pegasi is known to exhibit strong and frequent radio emission driven by magnetic activity. Until now, however, the radio emission from the individual components was not spatially resolved. Both stars in the system are magnetically active low-mass stars of the same age that produce radio bursts but have varying interior structures. This makes EQ Pegasi an ideal source for isolating the influence of stellar interior structure and dynamos on magnetic activity, radio bursts and space weather around M dwarfs.
In this talk, I will present results from an observation campaign on EQ Pegasi with the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in which we were able to resolve the radio emission from both stellar components for the first time. This enabled us to directly compare the burst occurrence and morphology between the two stars. I will detail the detection and classification of radio bursts, as well as the implications for magnetic energy release and space weather conditions around the M dwarfs. Given the high occurrence rate of terrestrial exoplanets around M dwarfs, these results provide new observational constraints on stellar space weather environments relevant to exoplanet habitability.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 2 |
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