Astronomers confirm first coronal mass ejection from a star beyond our Sun
Astronomers have captured a powerful coronal mass ejection erupting from a star roughly 130 light-years away—marking the first confirmed detection of a CME on a star other than the Sun. The blast was so intense it could strip the atmosphere from any nearby planet, leaving a barren, airless world in its wake.
Our Sun frequently hurls out CMEs—colossal clouds of magnetized plasma that shape space weather and can disrupt satellites, power grids, and communications on Earth. For years, researchers have suspected that other stars unleash similar outbursts, but definitive proof has been elusive. That’s now changed.
Led by Joe Callingham of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), the team used a two-pronged approach. The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope detected the radio burst produced as the CME raced through interplanetary space, while ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory measured the star’s temperature, rotation, and X-ray brightness to pin down its activity profile.
The culprit is a red dwarf—cooler and smaller than the Sun, with about half the Sun’s mass. Despite its modest size, it’s a magnetic powerhouse. Its magnetic field is approximately 300 times stronger than the Sun’s, and it spins about 20 times faster. The CME it launched tore through space at an extraordinary 2,400 kilometers per second. For comparison, only about one in every 2,000 CMEs from our Sun reaches such blistering speeds.
This discovery reshapes how scientists think about exoplanet habitability, especially around red dwarfs, which are the most common stars in our galaxy. Intense, frequent CMEs can erode planetary atmospheres, bombard surfaces with radiation, and dramatically alter climates—critical factors when assessing whether a world can sustain life. With this confirmed detection, researchers finally have a benchmark for modeling space weather on distant stars and understanding the true risks to planets in their habitable zones.
By combining radio observations with X-ray measurements, the study demonstrates a powerful blueprint for finding and characterizing stellar CMEs across the Milky Way. The findings were published in the journal Nature, opening the door to a new era of space weather forecasting beyond our solar system.
