My former PhD student and postdoc Ekaterina Ilin, now a postdoc at ASTRON in the Netherlands, has achieved a really cool result. Contunuing our work on Star-Planet-Interactions (SPI) together and collaborating with her new colleagues, she has analyzed a wealth of space-based light curves of the young exoplanet host star HIP 67522 and showed that the star flares much more often on the side that is facing the close-in exoplanet. It has been expected from theoretical considerations that close-in exoplanet might tamper with the stellar magnetic field, but more it has taken more than 15 years to finally achieve observational evidence. Our results have been published in Nature, and have been disseminated widely in press releases.

Some links here:

Paper:
Ilin, Ekaterina; Vedantham, Harish K.; Poppenhäger, Katja; Bloot, Sanne; Callingham, Joseph R.; Brandeker, Alexis; Chakraborty, Hritam, “Close-in planet induces flares on its host star”, Nature, Volume 643, Issue 8072, pp. 645-648 (2025); https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025Natur.643..645I/abstract

Press release AIP:
https://www.aip.de/en/news/stellar-fireworks/

Press release ESA:
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheops/Clingy_planets_can_trigger_own_doom_suspect_Cheops_and_TESS