Living with a Red Dwarf Star: Radiation and Plasma Environments of Hosted Planets

Details Living with a Red Dwarf Star: Radiation and Plasma Environments of Hosted Planets Living with a Red Dwarf Star: Radiation and Plasma Environments of Hosted Planets

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...210.3303g&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #33.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.145

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

2

Scientific paper

Red Dwarf (dM) stars are the most numerous stars in our Galaxy. These cool, faint and low mass stars make up > 75% of all stars. Also dM stars have extremely long life times >50-100 Gyr. Determining the number of red dwarfs with planets and assessing planetary habitability (a planet’s potential to develop and sustain life) is critically important because such studies would indicate how common life is in the universe. Our program - Living with a Red Dwarf - addresses these questions by investigating the long-term nuclear evolution and magnetic-dynamo coronal and chromospheric X-ray to Ultraviolet properties of red dwarf stars with widely different ages. The major focus of the program is to study the magnetic-dynamo generated coronal and chromospheric X-ray-Ultraviolet emissions and flare properties. Also studied is how the stellar emissions and winds affect hosted planets and impact on their habitability. For this program we have selected 15 nearby dM0-5 star as proxies for dM-stars of different ages to characterize their radiation and high energy plasma properties. We are constructing irradiance tables (X-UV fluxes) that are used to model the effects of XUV radiation on planetary atmospheres and on possible life on planetary surfaces. Despite the earlier pessimistic view that red dwarfs stars are not suitable environments for habitable planets mainly because their low luminosities require a host planet to orbit quite close (r <0.3 AU) to be warm enough to support life. Our initial study shows that red dwarf stars (at least stars hotter than dM5) can be suitable as hosts for habitable planets.
This research is supported by grants from NASA/FUSE (NNX06AD38G) and NSF (AST-0507542 & AST-0507536) which we gratefully acknowledge. The “Living with a Red Dwarf Star” Program is on the web at: http://astronomy.villanova.edu/livingwithareddwarf/Opener.htm

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