The Mouse That Roared: A Superflare from the dMe Flare Star EV Lac Detected by Swift and Konus-Wind

Less imagination is needed in drawing cartoons representing stellar flares, such as this nice one, since the "one-loop-fits-all" approach seems to offer enough theoretical flexibility. This one shows "the mouse that roared", a faint dMe flare star hosting a tremendously powerful flare event. This monolithic loop approach actually works well for some of the observables of solar flares, even though we can resolve some of their structure and have much broader diagnostic information (usually). But the long-overdue introduction of filamentary structure in solar flares was both necessary and reasonable.

      One interesting diagnostic here, not readily available for solar flares, was the detection of Fe Kα photons in the X-ray spectrum. The cartoon suggests that these come from a large albedo patch illuminated by the gigantic hot and dense flare loop.