* Astronomy

NASAs Swift satellite picked up the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than our Sun. The flare, an explosive release of energy from a star, packed the power of thousands of solar flares. It would have been visible to the naked eye if the star had been easily observable in the night sky at the time.
The star, known as EV Lacertae, isnt much to write home about. Its a run-of-the-mill red dwarf, by far the most common type of star in the universe. It shines with only one percent of the Suns light, and contains only a third of the Suns mass. At a distance of only 16 light-years, EV Lacertae is one of our closest stellar neighbours. But with its feeble light output, its faint magnitude-10 glow is far below naked-eye visibility.

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