News Summary Archives

Coronal And Chromospheric Activity Of Teegarden’s Star

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.SR
April 4, 2025
Filed under , , , , , , , , ,
Coronal And Chromospheric Activity Of Teegarden’s Star
Selected spectra of Teegarden’s star around the Hα line to demonstrate the line shape during quiescent phases and all flares. The spectra of activity level (1) are shown in green, of activity level (2) in blue, and of activity level (3) in red. The flare spectra are shown in magenta. There are a few spectra showing peculiar line shapes with broad additional line components either in absorption or emission (cyan lines). The dashed vertical line marks the central wavelength of Hα. The normalisation wavelength intervals are located well outside any broad wings at 6537.4–6547.9 and 6577.9–6586.4 Å. For the shown spectra the statistical errors are insignificant. — astro-ph.SR

Teegarden’s star is a late-type M-dwarf planet host, typically showing only rather low levels of activity. In this paper we present an extensive characterisation of this activity at photospheric, chromospheric, and coronal levels.

We specifically investigated TESS observations of Teegarden’s star, which showed two very large flares with an estimated flare fluence between 1029 and 1032 erg comparable to the largest solar flares. We furthermore analysed nearly 300 CARMENES spectra and 11 ESPRESSO spectra covering all the usually used chromospheric lines in the optical from the Ca ii H & K lines at 3930 Å to the He i infrared triplet at 10830 Å.

These lines show different behaviour: The He i infrared triplet is the only one absent in all spectra, some lines show up only during flares, and others are always present and highly variable. Specifically, the Hα line is more or less filled in during quiescence; however, the higher Balmer lines are still observed in emission.

Many chromospheric lines show a correlation with Hα variability, which, in addition to stochastic behaviour, also shows systematic behaviour on different timescales including the rotation period. Moreover, we found several flares and also report hints of an erupting prominence, which may have led to a coronal mass ejection.

Finally, we present X-ray observations of Teegarden’s star (i.e. a discovery pointing obtained with the Chandra observatory) and an extensive study with the XMM-Newton observatory; when these two large flares were observed, one of them showed clear signatures of the Neupert effect, suggesting the production of hard X-rays in the system.

B. Fuhrmeister, J.H.M.M. Schmitt, A. Reienrs, S. Czesla, V.J.S. Béjar, J. Caballero, Th. Henning, J.C. Morales, A. Quirrenbach, I. Ribas, J. Robrade, P.C. Schneider, M. Zechmeister

Comments: 15 pages, 20 figures
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2504.02338 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2504.02338v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.02338
Focus to learn more
Journal reference: 2024A&A…691A.208F
Submission history
From: Birgit Fuhrmeister
[v1] Thu, 3 Apr 2025 07:18:54 UTC (4,355 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02338

Astrobiology, Space Weather,

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻