Space Exploration
Oct. 15th, 2026 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithExoplanet Magnetic Field Measured Directly for First Time Via Radio Bursts
For the first time, astronomers have directly measured the magnetic field of a planet orbiting another star — detecting circularly polarized radio bursts from the giant world Beta Pictoris b and tracing them, through a sophisticated astrometric technique, to the planet itself rather than its host star. The result, reported in a preprint posted September 15, 2026, by Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos, Edo Berger, and Yvette Cendes, closes the last major gap in the quest to characterize planetary magnetic fields across the galaxy and represents the first direct magnetic field measurement for any planet beyond our solar system.
For the first time, astronomers have directly measured the magnetic field of a planet orbiting another star — detecting circularly polarized radio bursts from the giant world Beta Pictoris b and tracing them, through a sophisticated astrometric technique, to the planet itself rather than its host star. The result, reported in a preprint posted September 15, 2026, by Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos, Edo Berger, and Yvette Cendes, closes the last major gap in the quest to characterize planetary magnetic fields across the galaxy and represents the first direct magnetic field measurement for any planet beyond our solar system.
