New Mass-Loss Measurements from Astrospheric Lyα Absorption

By B. Wood, H. Mueller, Gary Zank, J. Linsky, S. Redfield. 2005

383 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Measurements of stellar mass-loss rates are used to assess how wind strength varies with coronal activity and age for solar-like stars. Mass loss generally increases with activity, but we find evidence that winds suddenly weaken at a certain activity threshold. Very active stars are often observed to have polar starspots, and we speculate that the magnetic field geometry associated with these spots may be inhibiting the winds. Our inferred mass-loss/age relation represents an empirical estimate of the history of the solar wind. This result is important for planetary studies as well as solar/stellar astronomy, since solar wind erosion may have played an important role in the evolution of planetary atmospheres.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c599da67908f9e9edda123de8ba6f471b72da6f1

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

• Emergence of a Habitable Planet (2007, background): “Wood et al. (2005) have since characterized the winds of another half-dozen solar analogues.”
• 3D modelling of the early Martian Climate under a denser CO2 atmosphere: Temperatures and CO2 ice clouds. (2012, background): “Similarly the majority of the valley networks are found almost exclusively in the highly cratered ancient southern highlands, which date back from the end of the heavy bombardment period some 3.5-3.8 Gyr ago (Fasset and Head, 2008).”
• The Sun in Time: Activity and Environment (2007, methodology): “The only independent variable, the stellar age, then determines the rotation period and, through the internal magnetic dynamo, magnetic activity at all levels of the stellar atmosphere, probably including characteristics of the stellar wind (Wood et al., 2002, 2005; Kulikov et al., 2006).”
• Atmospheric Escape and Evolution of Terrestrial Planets and Satellites (2008, background): “HST high-resolution spectroscopic observations of the hydrogen Lyman-α feature of several nearby main-sequence G and K stars by Wood et al. (2002, 2005) have revealed the absorption of neutral hydrogen associated with the interaction between the stars’ fully ionized coronal winds with the partially…”
• NEW DEBRIS DISKS AROUND YOUNG, LOW-MASS STARS DISCOVERED WITH THE SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE (2009, positive): “However, at these ages of <700 Myr, X-ray activity is not a reliable proxy for stellar wind mass-loss rate as discovered in (Wood et al. 2005).”
• The Complete Census of 70 μm-Bright Debris Disks within “The Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems” Spitzer Legacy Survey of Sun-like Stars (2007, background): “There is still significant uncertainty in the appropriate values, however (e.g., Wood et al. 2005; Matt & Pudritz 2007), and so we do not consider further the details of this potentially relevant dust removal mechanism.”
• Spitzer IRS Spectroscopy of IRAS-discovered Debris Disks (2006, methodology): “Changes in the field structure could precipitate changes in the stellar wind (Wood et al. 2005).”
• Stellar winds on the main-sequence - II. The evolution of rotation and winds (2015, background): “However, our results suggest a further M−3.36? dependence for the mass loss rate, and so the results could have been biased by the fact that the intermediate activity stars in the sample of Wood et al. (2005) were mostly K stars, whereas the low activity stars were mostly G stars.”
• TESTING A PREDICTIVE THEORETICAL MODEL FOR THE MASS LOSS RATES OF COOL STARS (2011, methodology): “If instead these values were used, our modeled mass loss rates would be in better agreement with the astrospheric observations of Wood et al. (2005a).”
• Improved angular momentum evolution model for solar-like stars (2013, methodology): “We therefore have to rely mainly on the results of numerical simulations of stellar winds, calibrated onto a few, mostly indirect, mass-loss measurements (e.g., Wood et al. 2002, 2005).”
• Predicting low-frequency radio fluxes of known extrasolar planets (2007, methodology): “Comparing the measured absorption to that calculated by hydrodynamic codes, these measurements allowed the first empirical estimation of the evolution of the stellar mass loss rate as a function of stellar age (Wood et al., 2002; Wood, 2004; Wood et al., 2005).”
• Habitable planets around the star Gliese 581 (2007, background): “Observational constraints on stellar winds exist (Wood et al. 2005), but their interpretation is still debated (Holzwarth & Jardine 2007).”
• THE MUSCLES TREASURY SURVEY. I. MOTIVATION AND OVERVIEW (2016, background): “Additionally, it is likely that the stellar mass-loss rates are higher earlier in their evolution (Wood et al. 2005a), increasing the potential planetary mass-loss.”