Here at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seatthle, the very well organised Villanova crowd (who apparently just gave Sean a medal or something), have an intriguing paper on quiescence in α Cen A
To cut a long story short, x-ray flux from α Cen has plummeted by almost a factor of 100, suggesting the star has entered a unspotted quiet state, possibly analogous to the Sun's Maunder Minimum, since as a first approximation x-ray activity in solar like main sequence stars correlates with the number of star spots, which anti-correlate with the stellar luminosity (fewer spots, less light, counter-intuitively).
This would be good to know fer sure, relevant for understanding solar variability.
More data needed.
More like this
α Centauri B, a mere 4 lightyears away has a terrestrial planet orbiting it.
Greg Laughlin at Systemic has put out a teasing hint about a potential major extrasolar planet discovery.
Gorgeous Spitzer Space Telescope Image of Ω Centauri
last week of the globs workshop, so the pace is stepped up, with two talks this afternoon
Michele on dynamical evolution (video and podcast)