Do all stars produce solar winds?


Not all of them, but many seem to. We can detect stellar winds in many different kinds of stars because certain spectral lines produced in the inner coronae of stars seem to show a systematic 'radial' motion. O and B-type stars have powerful winds driven by radiation pressure. Late-type G, K and M stars also show strong winds which get more powerful in red giant stars. A and F- type stars, to my recollection, seem to have less-strong winds than other spectral types...but even so are probably not completely absent, merely hard to detect because they are so weak. The equations that describe how stellar winds operate seem to be so general that nearly all stars that have coronal regions hotter than their photospheres, have winds. Stars without active chromospheres and coronal heating may, however, not have strong winds at all.


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All answers are provided by Dr. Sten Odenwald (Raytheon STX) for the
NASA IMAGE/POETRY Education and Public Outreach program.