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Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy

Evidence of a Massive Stellar Storm on a Nearby Star

12 November 2025

An international team of astronomers, led by API and the Observatoire de Paris-PSL, have observed the first clear signal of a giant stellar eruption from a star beyond our Solar System. The stellar eruption is analogous to a coronal mass ejection (CME) seen on our Sun, and implies a devastating impact for any planet unlucky enough to orbit the star. The team found the short, intense burst of radio waves from a nearby red dwarf star, located just 130 light years away, using Europe’s powerful LOFAR radio telescope.
This artist’s impression shows a coronal mass ejection, or CME, around a nearby star. During a CME, massive amounts of material are flung out from our star, flooding the surrounding space. These dramatic expulsions shape and drive space weather, such as the dazzling auroras we see on Earth, and can chip away at the atmospheres of any nearby planets. Astronomers using the LOFAR telescope have now definitively spotted a CME around another star for the first time. The explosive burst of material would be powerful enough to have a devastating impact on the atmosphere of any unlucky planet in its path.

First clear radio detection

CMEs are large eruptions of magnetized plasma from stars and play a major role in shaping space weather in our Solar System – such as driving the beautiful aurorae we see on Earth. While CMEs have long been expected to occur on other stars, this is the first time one has been observed through its characteristic radio signal.

“For the first time, we have evidence that hot plasma has been ejected from another star into interplanetary space,” said Dr. Callingham, author of the study and affiliated with both ASTRON (het Nederlands Instituut voor Radioastronomie) and API. “This gives us a chance to move beyond theory based solely on the Sun.”

“We show that this eruption would be devastating for a planet around such a star,” sai d Dr. Callingham. “The CME has the power to compress an Earth-like magnetosphere all the way down to the planet's surface, temporarily removing the planet’s atmospheric protection. This means such eruptions could determine whether a planet is potentially habitable.”

LOFAR’s unique capabilities

Red dwarf stars, which are 10 to 50% the mass of the Sun, are the most common hosts of Earth mass planets. But because their habitable zones, where liquid water could exist on their surface, are so close in, orbiting worlds are likely subjected to far more intense stellar storms than Earth.

“This discovery shows us that violent space weather is not unique to our Sun,” said co-lead author Dr. Cyril Tasse of the Observatoire de Paris-PSL. “We now know planets around small stars are facing frequent, powerful blasts. Thanks to the advanced data-processing methods developed at the Observatoire de Paris-PSL, we now have a way to measure just how extreme those conditions are”.

The finding opens a new window onto the study of space weather in other solar systems, with major implications for the search for a habitable planet. Upcoming observatories such as the Square Kilometre Array will allow astronomers to uncover many more of these stellar eruptions and understand how they shape the fate of exoplanets.

About the Research

The study was carried out within a successful international collaboration, highlighting the joint leadership of ASTRON and the Observatoire de Paris-PSL, and the critical role of software tools developed in France. The detection was made during the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey, which is mapping the northern sky and has observed about 86,000 stars within 100 parsecs of Earth.

The research was supported by the European Research Council, the Dutch Research Council (NWO), and other international partners. LOFAR is operated by ASTRON as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC).