Solar flares are, as astronomer Kosuke Namekata puts it, “sudden explosions that emanate from the surfaces of stars, including our own sun”. On rare instances, an interesting phenomenon occurs on the surface of a star: an extremely large superflare. But what makes them interesting, you may ask? They are interesting because “these result in massive magnetic storms, which when emitted from our sun can significantly effect [sic] the earth's technological infrastructure." Studying these flares could also help us understand how they affect the existence or non-existence of life on planets.
Hence understanding the properties of superflares can be vital, but their rareness means that data from our sun is difficult to gather. This has led researchers to look for exoplanets similar to earth, and to examine the stars they orbit.
And thanks to Kyoto University's 3.8 meter Seimei telescope, astronomers from Japan can now observe other stars from great distances. And they have been very lucky to observe a superflare on their very first night of observation.
Learn more about their findings over at EurekAlert.
(Image Credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/ EurekAlert)