Using Solar Analogues to Understand Our Sun

Researchers examined, analyzed and modeled the young Sun-like star Kappa 1 Ceti to understand how our Sun may have shaped Earth and possibly helped in the development of life.

IMAGE: Illustration of what the Sun may have been like 4 billion years ago, around the time life developed on Earth. CREDIT: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

One of the benefits of being a planetary scientist is that we can usually touch samples of what we want to analyze. For example, if we want to understand the Earth’s past, we only have to analyze the rocks, or sometimes the gassy inclusions in the crystals in the rocks. But we can do that, and we can and have built a story of Earth.

This technique is not one that astrophysicists can use to analyze the past of stars or galaxies. The distances are usually huge, so we’re seeing objects in the distant past, and we cannot sample their materials. We can, however, use the vast number of similar objects at various stages in their life cycles to understand how they have changed over time. And that is what new research published in The Astrophysical Journal has done when it comes to the past of our own Sun.

The star involved in this particular study is Kappa 1 Ceti, a solar analogue with a similar mass and surface temperature to our Sun, located about 30 light-years away. It’s only 600–750 million years old, so it is relatively close and…