AAS 204th Meeting, June 2004
Session 36 Stellar-Solar Connection: What the Stars Teach Us about Our Sun
SPD Topical Session, Tuesday, June 1, 2004, 8:30-10:00am, 10:45am-12:30pm, 702/704/706

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[36.04] What We Can Learn from Studying Stellar Flares (That We Can't From Solar Flares)

R. A. Osten (NRAO)

The solar-stellar flare connection allows stellar astronomers to envisage the types of flares one might encounter on other late-type stars besides the Sun, using the exquisite spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution available on our nearest star. The stellar-solar flare connection, in contrast, puts actual constraints on the kinds of flare-like variations encountered in quite different stellar environments from the Sun's. Recent multi-wavelength work on stellar flares has revealed the complexity of stellar flare processes; there are some cases where the solar expectations appear to work, yet for many other individually studied stellar flares there is a confounding disparity between expected and observed behaviors. Statistical treatments of stellar flares also reveal a disconnect. Radio and X-ray observations provide the best probes of the dynamics of nonthermal and thermal electrons, respectively, and I will concentrate on these signatures of coronal flaring. I will discuss recent work relating to observations and theory of flares in a variety of stellar environments, from brown dwarfs to M dwarfs to active binary systems, and K giants.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: rosten@nrao.edu

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
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