Astronomers have achieved a long-sought cosmic milestone: the first confirmed detection of a massive stellar explosion known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupting from a star beyond our Sun.
The discovery was made by a team led by Dr. Joe Callingham of ASTRON using data from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory and the ground-based LOFAR radio telescope. They observed a powerful, short-lived burst of radio waves emanating from a star roughly 130 light-years away. This specific radio signature is the telltale fingerprint of a shock wave generated as a colossal cloud of magnetized plasma violently breaks free from the star’s gravitational and magnetic grasp, confirming it as a definitive CME.
While CMEs are frequent occurrences on our Sun, directly witnessing one on another star has been an elusive goal for decades. Previous observations had only hinted at their possibility. “This kind of radio signal just wouldn’t exist unless material had completely left the star’s bubble of powerful magnetism,” explains Callingham, whose research is published in Nature. “In other words: it’s caused by a CME.”
This observation opens a new window into understanding extreme space weather throughout the galaxy. The detected eruption was astonishingly powerful—orders of magnitude more energetic than typical solar CMEs. Such a blast would be catastrophic for any nearby planets, as it possesses enough force to strip away planetary atmospheres over time, fundamentally impacting their potential for habitability.
By finally confirming the existence of these eruptions on other stars, astronomers can now begin to study their frequency, strength, and mechanics in different stellar environments. This research is crucial for building a broader understanding of how stars influence their planetary systems. It helps scientists assess the threats posed by stellar activity to exoplanet atmospheres and deepens our knowledge of the magnetic lives of stars, marking a significant leap forward in stellar astrophysics.
