Description
Coronal Mass Ejections are predicted to play an important role in planetary atmospheric erosion, especially for planets that are close to their host star. However, this conclusion remains controversial because, despite decades of searches, there has not been an unambiguous detection of a CME from a star beyond our Sun. A clear signature of a CME is a type II radio burst, which is emitted from the shock wave produced as the CME travels through the stellar corona into interplanetary space.
In this talk, I will present the first detection of a stellar Type II radio burst, originating from the early M dwarf StKM 1-1262 (Callingham et al., Nature, 2025). I will show how the burst constrains the CME shock properties and the coronal environment of a low-mass star, and discuss the implications for space weather and atmospheric loss for a hypothetical planet in the star’s habitable zone. I will conclude with new radio-burst discoveries from our ongoing wide-field survey of the northern sky, opening a path toward population-level constraints on stellar CMEs.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
|---|