You can read the study free here! rdcu.be/ePBCk

This discovery adds a vital piece to the puzzle of finding and understanding habitable worlds beyond our own.

Thanks to my amazing collaborators, especially Cyril Tasse and Philippe Zarka.

🪐 Read more in our paper:
👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎨 Artwork: Olena Shmahalo / Callingham et al.

The signal we found was far more luminous and energetic than anything ever seen from our Sun — a truly colossal stellar storm.

If a planet were in that star’s habitable zone, its atmosphere would be in serious trouble. 😳🔥

CMEs produce a distinctive radio fingerprint called a Type II burst. Using the ultra-sensitive LOFAR telescope (operated by @astronnl.bsky.social) and software from Observatoire de Paris | PSL, we searched over 100,000 stars... and we got lucky! ✨

Thankfully, Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the worst of it. But for other stars, we had no idea how frequent or powerful these eruptions might be.

That’s where our study comes in. 🎯

But there’s still a huge unknown: how often do stars hurl super-heated plasma into space?

Our Sun does this through Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), which can trigger brilliant aurorae but also knock out satellites and communications on Earth. ⚡🛰️

One of the big goals in astronomy over the coming decades is to find a truly habitable world around another star.

We’ve already made incredible progress — discovering thousands of exoplanets, many within the “Habitable Zone,” where liquid water could exist. 💧🌍

I think @scibry.bsky.social was the person who coined the term!

Ekaterina being her usual conscientious self! I assume via the Google doc

Ekaterina Ilin and team are putting in one on (broadly) the sub-alfvenic region around the Sun and stars. Let me know (or her directly) if you would like to be involved!

Thanks for all the support from my amazing colleagues, students, friends and family that made this possible (especially my amazing wife who is very soon to give birth!).

Lets go the other way, rebranding Astronomical Society of Australia as the Australian Astronomical Society. I see no problem with this.

Sorry to hear Gerard. I’m sure your next steps will be even more exciting. Let me know if I can be of help!

JWST knows how to make things shine!

Note that this position is predicated on funding being awarded. I will know if this is the case at the end of October.

While some experience in radio astronomy, stellar astrophysics, or exoplanet science would be helpful - curiosity and enthusiasm are the only real prerequisites.

Note that I am happy to take the project in any direction (technical, theoretical, observational) under the broad remit of what radio can tell us about stars, planets and space weather.