Weather in stellar atmosphere: the dynamics of mercury clouds in alpha Andromedae

The formation of long-lasting structures at the surfaces of stars is commonly ascribed to the action of strong magnetic fields. This paradigm is supported by observations of evolving cool spots in the Sun and active late-type stars, and stationary chemical spots in the early-type magnetic stars. However, results of our seven-year monitoring of mercury spots in non-magnetic early-type star alpha Andromedae show that the picture of magnetically-driven structure formation is fundamentally incomplete. Using an indirect stellar surface mapping technique, we construct a series of 2-D images of starspots and discover a secular evolution of the mercury cloud cover in this star. This remarkable structure formation process, observed for the first time in any star, is plausibly attributed to a non-equilibrium, dynamical evolution of the heavy-element clouds created by atomic diffusion and may have the same underlying physics as the weather patterns on terrestrial and giant planets.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; to be published in Nature Physic

No Sun-like dynamo on the active star ζ Andromedae from starspot asymmetry

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via the DOI in this record.Sunspots are cool areas caused by strong surface magnetic fields inhibiting convection. Moreover, strong magnetic fields can alter the average atmospheric structure , degrading our ability to measure stellar masses and ages. Stars more active than the Sun have more and stronger dark spots than in the solar case, including on the rotational pole itself. Doppler imaging, which has so far produced the most detailed images of surface structures on other stars than the Sun, cannot always distinguish the hemisphere in which the starspots are located, especially in the equatorial region and if the data quality is not optimal . This leads to problems in investigating the north-south distribution of starspot active latitudes (those latitudes with more spot activity), which are crucial constraints of dynamo theory. Polar spots, inferred only from Doppler tomography, could plausibly be observational artifacts, casting some doubt on their very existence. Here we report imaging of the old, magnetically-active star ζ Andromedae using long-baseline infrared interferometry. In our data, a dark polar spot is seen in each of two epochs, while lower-latitude spot structures in both hemispheres do not persist between observations revealing global starspot asymmetries. The north-south symmetry of active latitudes observed on the Sun is absent on ζ And, which hosts global spot patterns that cannot be produced by solar-type dynamos.National Science Foundation (NSF)Hungarian Academy of Science

Strong dipole magnetic fields in fast rotating fully convective stars

International audienceM dwarfs are the most numerous stars in our Galaxy, with masses between approximately 0.5 and 0.1 solar masses. Many of them show surface activity qualitatively similar to our Sun and generate flares, high X-ray fluxes and large-scale magnetic fields1,2,3,4. Such activity is driven by a dynamo powered by the convective motions in their interiors2,5,6,7,8. Understanding properties of stellar magnetic fields in these stars finds a broad application in astrophysics, including theory of stellar dynamos and environment conditions around planets that may be orbiting these stars. Most stars with convective envelopes follow a rotation–activity relationship where various activity indicators saturate in stars with rotation periods shorter than a few days2,6,8. The activity gradually declines with rotation rate in stars rotating more slowly. It is thought that, due to a tight empirical correlation between X-ray radiance and magnetic flux9, the stellar magnetic fields will also saturate, to values around 4 kG (ref. 10). Here we report the detection of magnetic fields above the presumed saturation limit in four fully convective M dwarfs. By combining results from spectroscopic and polarimetric studies, we explain our findings in terms of bistable dynamo models11,12: stars with the strongest magnetic fields are those in a dipole dynamo state, whereas stars in a multipole state cannot generate fields stronger than about 4 kG. Our study provides observational evidence that the dynamo in fully convective M dwarfs generates magnetic fields that can differ not only in the geometry of their large-scale component, but also in the total magnetic energy.Our understanding of origin and evolution of the magnetic fields in M dwarfs is based on models of the rotationally driven convective dynamos