Radio study localizes auroral emission to Beta Pictoris b

A preprint posted on 15 September 2026 locates recurring radio bursts at Beta Pictoris b, separating the giant planet’s emission from its host star. Kevin N. Ortiz Ceballos, Edo Berger and Yvette Cendes interpret the signal as auroral radiation. Their paper has not been peer reviewed.

Separate reports by ScienceAlert and BBC Sky at Night Magazine on 22 September brought renewed attention to the finding. The preprint analyses four MeerKAT observing sessions in 2025 and 2026.

Beta Pictoris b is about 10–12 times Jupiter’s mass and lies roughly 63 light-years from Earth, BBC Sky at Night Magazine explains. Its host star is magnetically quiet.

The researchers aligned the radio image with reference positions provided by quasars. Their calculation includes measured systematic errors and places the source at planet b, inconsistent with the star’s position at 4.4-sigma significance.

The authors detected rapidly changing, strongly polarized bursts reaching 3.5 gigahertz. They identify an electron cyclotron maser mechanism, in which accelerated electrons emit radio waves. That interpretation implies a magnetic field of at least 1,250 gauss at the emission site.

This is a lower bound for the radio-emitting region, rather than a map of the planet’s magnetic field. The paper proposes continued monitoring to investigate the field’s geometry.