Flares: the Solar-Stellar Connection

Abstract

The systematic study of stellar flares in now more than 30 years old. Throughout that time the solar flare paradigm has been used, highly successfully, to understand various aspects of the stellar phenomenon. In this introductory overview I will attempt to justify the use of the solar model in understanding the stellar equivalent. But I will also point out differences between the two which may require extension of the basic solar model and speculate briefly on what these extensions might be.There are many excellent previous reviews of stellar flares in the literature (Haisch 1989, Byrne 1983, 1992), to which the reader is referred, along with the other reviews in this volume, for further reading.