Distant Suns: Solar Flares as Proxies for Stellar Flares
Abstract
The solar corona has been a Rosetta stone directing our knowledge and understanding of stellar coronae. Because of its proximity, the Sun can be observed in great detail, and detailed physical models derived from such observations are often used to explain stellar phenomena. Large stellar flares are traditionally modeled as a single coronal loop evolving hydrodynamically. However, such a picture has no counterpart on the Sun, where flares are observed to be complex events, generally affecting large areas of an active region and resulting in post-flare loop arcades that have a different magnetic topology compared to the pre-flare region. Here we discuss a large flare on a dM3.5Ve dwarf, Ross 154, that was observed with Chandra. The flare shows a pronounced dual-decay structure. We model the event as a set of cascading loops in an arcade that are sequentially energized, leading to predicted light curves that also exhibit similar behavior. This work was supported by CXC NASA contract NAS8-39073 (VLK, BW) and XRT NASA contract NNM07AB07C (KR).
- Publication:
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Chandra's First Decade of Discovery
- Pub Date:
- September 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009cfdd.confE.127K
- Keywords:
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- Stellar Spectroscopy