“Flares occur when magnetic field lines in the star twist and snap, releasing radiation and accelerating electrons and charged particles outwards,” MacGregor told SYFY WIRE. “The properties of the millimeter emission indicated that it was directly tracing those accelerated electrons. Because millimeter and UV emissions traced each other so closely, it might mean that millimeter observations could tell us about the limits of the UV environment of stars and exoplanets." Though Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf only a fraction the size of our Sun, its deceptively small size doesn’t mean it can’t generate the rush of radiation that MacGregor and her colleagues caught multi-wavelength coverage of. Seeing the flare in various wavelengths gave them the opportunity to compare wavelength timing and energy. It also told them what the radiation was being produced by and where it was coming from. Visible light probably came from deeper in the star’s atmosphere, which can explain why there was not nearly as much as other types of light; it took longer for it to be emitted into space.