Re: Mercury and 61 Cygni B

In article
<aa256851-d640-49ed-99cc-682ab20f989c@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Crown-Horned Snorkack  <chornedsnorkack@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>> Well, it was my understanding that flare stars release thousands of
>> times as much X-rays and UV as our Sun does during a Solar flare.
>
>Seriously?
>
>How do those stars beat the Wien law blue edge of the thermal
>blackbody radiation of the Sun?

Same way that flares on the Sun emit X-rays, presumably - enormous
magnetic fields stirred up by convection in turbulent plasma can
accelerate electrons vigorously.  

See http://www.lmsal.com/SXT/homepage.html
for some spectacular movies
of the soft-X-ray sun; there's a higher-resolution satellite up at the
moment but the current movie doesn't appear to have the Sun properly
positioned in the frame.

Tom