Space Telescope Catches Monster Flare

gollum123 writes, "NASA's Swift satellite has seen a giant flare explode from a nearby star. Our sun also flares when twisted magnetic field lines in the solar atmosphere suddenly snap — but this was on a far larger scale, perhaps 100 million times as strong. The energy released by the explosion on II Pegasi was equivalent to about 50 quintillion atomic bombs. If the Sun were ever to produce such an outburst, it would almost certainly cause a mass extinction on Earth. II Pegasi is a binary system 135 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its two stars are close, only a few stellar radii apart; as a result, tidal forces cause both stars to spin quickly, rotating in lockstep once in seven days compared to the Sun's 28-day rotation period. Fast rotation is thought to be conducive to strong stellar flares."

Comments

Images and more Information

[iONiUM]

Here is the NASA link to this item:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/mon ster_flare.html

I really wish slashdot would just link the real news item instead of the crappy ones it always seems to find. There wasn't even an image on the one they linked.

Re:Images and more Information

[tunguska1908]

Note... the images are not from the event described in the article. While very informative, they are images of flares on the Sun. The event that is described in the article is rather distant to get that type of imagery.