The Variable Radio Emission Of V830 Tau And Its Putative Planet

Image of the field around V830 Tau. The cell size is 0.5”. The contours are 9, 18, 36, 72, 144, 288, 576, 1150, 2300, and 4610 µJy, with a blank-field rms of 1.8 µJy. — astro-ph.SR

We report on the first moderate-length time-scale observations of a young stellar object (YSO) at microwave frequencies. V830 Tau was monitored over the course of eight days with the JVLA at a frequency range of 4-8 GHz.

Previous brief radio observations of this purported planet-hosting star indicated a radio-bright source with sparse evidence of dramatic intensity changes. Our observations confirm variability larger than a factor of five over the 8 days, with closer-spaced data indicating a long-lived flare event spanning multiple days.

We discuss a hypothesis that the large, long-duration radio flare may be produced as a result of magnetospheric interaction between the star and its purported planet, using multi-year monitoring of a few active binary systems with the Green Bank Interferometer to augment our discussion.

Although we cannot disentangle the effect of the large stellar surface area from any effects of orbital separation, the disputed star-planet system would have a large amount of power generated from stretching and breaking of magnetic fields.

If this long-duration flare behavior repeats with additional data on timescales close to the planetary orbital period, microwave signatures of interacting magnetospheres could be a new observational tool to confirm the existence of planets around young, magnetically active stars.

Rachel A. Osten, Scott J. Wolk

Comments: 13 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in AAS Journals
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2509.05082 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2509.05082v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.05082
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Submission history
From: Rachel Osten
[v1] Fri, 5 Sep 2025 13:20:58 UTC (883 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05082
Astrobiology,

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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