Quiescent and flaring X-ray emission from the nearby M/T dwarf binary SCR 1845-6357

Aims: X-ray emission is an important diagnostics to study magnetic activity in very low mass stars that are presumably fully convective and have an effectively neutral photosphere. Methods: We investigate an XMM-Newton observation of SCR 1845-6357, a nearby, ultracool M 8.5 / T 5.5 dwarf binary. The binary is unresolved in the XMM detectors, but the X-ray emission is very likely from the M 8.5 dwarf. We compare its flaring emission to those of similar very low mass stars and additionally present an XMM observation of the M 8 dwarf VB 10. Results: We detect quasi-quiescent X-ray emission from SCR 1845-6357 at soft X-ray energies in the 0.2-2.0 keV band, as well as a strong flare with a count rate increase of a factor of 30 and a duration of only 10 min. The quasi-quiescent X-ray luminosity of log LX = 26.2 erg/s and the corresponding activity level of log LX/Lbol = -3.8 point to a fairly active star. Coronal temperatures of up to 5 MK and frequent minor variability support this picture. During the flare, which is accompanied by a significant brightening in the near-UV, plasma temperatures of 25-30 MK are observed and an X-ray luminosity of LX = 8 × 1027 erg/s is reached. Conclusions: The source SCR 1845-6357 is a nearby, very low mass star that emits X-rays at detectable levels in quasi-quiescence, implying the existence of a corona. The high activity level, coronal temperatures and the observed large flare point to a rather active star, despite its estimated age of a few Gyr.

Mixing Enthalpy for Binary Mixtures Containing Ionic Liquids

A complete review of the published data on the mixing enthalpies of mixtures containing ionic liquids, measured directly using calorimetric techniques, is presented in this paper. The field of ionic liquids is very active and a number of research groups in the world are dealing with different applications of these fluids in the fields of chemistry, chemical engineering, energy, gas storage and separation or materials science. In all these fields, the knowledge of the energetics of mixing is capital both to understand the interactions between these fluids and the different substrates and also to establish the energy and environmental cost of possible applications. Due to the relative novelty of the field, the published data is sometimes controversial and recent reviews are fragmentary and do not represent a set of reliable data. This fact can be attributed to different reasons: (i) difficulties in controlling the purity and stability of the ionic liquid samples; (ii) availability of accurate experimental techniques, appropriate for the measurement of viscous, charged, complex fluids; and (iii) choice of an appropriate clear thermodynamic formalism to be used by an interdisciplinary scientific community. In this paper, we address all these points and propose a critical review of the published data, advise on the most appropriate apparatus and experimental procedure to measure this type of physical-chemical data in ionic liquids as well as the way to treat the information obtained by an appropriate thermodynamic formalism.