NASA's Swift Spots Mega Flares from Tiny Exploding Red Dwarf (VIDEO)

NASA's Swift satellite has officially detected the strongest, hottest and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever spotted from a nearby dwarf star. The record-setting series of explosions were as much as 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded and now, scientists are taking a closer look at the resulting data.

"We used to think major flaring episodes from red dwarfs lasted no more than a day, but Swift detected at least seven powerful eruptions over a period of about two weeks," said Stephen Drake, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a news release. "This was a very complex event."

In April 2014, Swift detected a superflare from a red dwarf star in the binary system Dg CVn, located about 60 light-years away. Both stars in this binary system are dim red dwarfs with masses and sizes that are only about one-third of our sun's. Before now, the system was poorly studied since scientists didn't realize it could produce such large flares. This latest incident, though, shows otherwise.

Stars erupt with flares when around active regions of the star's atmosphere, magnetic fields become twisted and distorted. The fields accumulate energy and eventually a process called magnetic reconnection destabilizes the fields and results in a massive release of the stored energy, resulting in a flare. The outburst emits radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to visible, ultraviolet and X-ray light. In this case, the flare was phenomenal.

"For about three minutes after the BAT [Swift's Burst Alert Telescope] trigger, the superflare's X-ray brightness was great than the combined luminosity of both stars at all wavelengths under normal conditions," said Adam Kowalski, one of the researchers. "Flares this large from red dwarfs are exceedingly rare."

The star managed to produce such a giant eruption due to its rapid spin. The flaring star in DG CVn rotates in under a day, which is about 30 or more times faster than our sun. Currently, the scientists are still analyzing the data from the flare in order to better understand the event and young stars in general. This could shed further light on star evolution.

The findings were presented at the August meeting of the American Astronomical Society's High Energy Astrophysics Division.

Want to see more? Check out the video below, courtesy of NASA and YouTube.