It is the first time to observe the aurora outside the Solar System

Astronomers have for the first time observed and recorded aurora outside the Solar System. The findings are published in the July 7 issue of Nature (Nature).

The phenomenon of aurora outside the Solar System

A group of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (USA) has recorded aurora phenomenon, which only occurs when the planet has a thick atmosphere and magnetosphere such as the Earth, while observing a The brown dwarf star Thien Cam is located 18.5 light years from Earth.

Picture 1 of It is the first time to observe the aurora outside the Solar System
Aurora on a brown dwarf star Thien Cam is located 18.5 light-years from Earth.(Source: Caltech)

Thanks to astronomical devices such as the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico, the California Hale telescope and the Keka observatory telescope in Hawaii, the observer team recorded polar magnetic luminescence. a celestial body ranked between stars and brown dwarfs in the astronomical scale.

Brown dwarfs are the names for "incomplete stars, " they are larger than the planet, but their weight is too small to produce nuclear fusion reactions like the Sun and other stars.

The Earth's aurora, simply understood as a strip of light, can sometimes be seen in the atmosphere near the Earth's two poles. In order to have aurora such as Earth, the planet needs two elements: a thick atmosphere and a magnetosphere. In the Solar System only two planets without magnetism are Venus and Mars , so they have no aurora.