Planets in close orbit around stars may be safe from dangerous flares

By Bas den Hond

We thought flares from a star’s surface could harm life on any nearby planet – but an analysis suggests that even if planets are in close orbit around small stars, they may actually escape being singed.

Ekaterina Ilin at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam in Germany has been studying flares using data captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). She found that the data made it possible to determine the location of giant …