Astronomers confirm first giant stellar blast beyond the Solar system

Using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR radio telescope, an international team detected a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) launched by a nearby red dwarf star roughly 130 light-years from Earth. This new observation was published in Nature.

CMEs are dramatic expulsions of magnetised plasma that routinely erupt from the Sun, shaping space weather and at times brushing Earth with auroras or disrupting satellites. But while the Sun's CMEs are well-studied, evidence of such eruptions on other stars has remained elusive. Earlier hints were indirect or inconclusive.

The key to the discovery was a short, intense burst of low-frequency radio waves, the kind generated when a CME punches through a star’s magnetic envelope and sends a shock wave rolling outward. The signal, captured by LOFAR and isolated using newly developed data-processing techniques, could only be produced if matter had fully broken free of the star’s powerful magnetic field.

To interpret this signal, astronomers relied on XMM-Newton to map the star’s rotation, temperature and X-ray brightness. Without these measurements, they could not determine the speed or behaviour of the escaping material. Only the combined datasets made it possible to confirm the CME and rule out other explanations.

A star built for extreme space weather

The eruption came from a red dwarf - a small, cool, and magnetically turbulent class of star that makes up the majority of the Milky Way’s stellar population. This particular dwarf rotates 20 times faster than the Sun, has a magnetic field 300 times stronger, and carries only half the Sun’s mass.

Researchers calculated that the CME was moving at a staggering 2400 kilometres per second, a velocity seen in only one out of roughly 2000 solar CMEs. Its speed and density were so high that any planet orbiting the star at close range would likely lose its entire atmosphere, stripped down to bare rock.

The finding adds a sobering layer to how scientists evaluate the habitability of exoplanets. A world may sit comfortably within a star’s “Goldilocks zone,” but that means little if the parent star regularly unleashes violent outbursts capable of blasting away the atmosphere that life depends on.

Because most known exoplanets orbit red dwarfs, understanding how extreme their space weather can be is crucial. If CMEs like this one are common, many potentially habitable planets may be far more vulnerable than previously thought.

Scientists expect the discovery to fuel future work, including with ESA’s upcoming X-ray mission NewAthena, which aims to push the boundaries of high-energy astronomy even further. For now, astronomers say the results stand as a reminder: the universe’s calmer stars, like the Sun, may be the exception, not the rule.

Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that the astronomers revealed the most detailed radio map of the Milky Way.