51 Pegasi - Maunder minimum candidate?

51 Pegasi - a planet-bearing Maunder minimum candidate
http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.4862

Abstract wrote:

We observed 51 Peg, the first detected planet-bearing star, in a 55 ks XMM-Newton pointing and in 5 ks pointings each with Chandra HRC-I and ACIS-S. The star has a very low count rate in the XMM observation, but is clearly visible in the Chandra images due to the detectors' different sensitivity at low X-ray energies. This allows a temperature estimate for 51 Peg's corona of T<1MK; the detected ACIS-S photons can be plausibly explained by emission lines of a very cool plasma near 200eV. The constantly low X-ray surface flux and the flat-activity profile seen in optical CaII data suggest that 51 Peg is a Maunder minimum star; an activity enhancement due to a Hot Jupiter, as proposed by recent studies, seems to be absent. The star's X-ray fluxes in different instruments are consistent with the exception of the HRC Imager, which might have a larger effective area below 200eV than given in the calibration.

what mean Maunder minimum?

The Maunder minimum is a period of abnormally low solar activity way back in the 1800's or so. It resulted in a sort of "mini ice age" on Earth that lasted a few years. It was nothing comparable to the last real ice age though, and the current solar minimum is nothing close to the Maunder minimum.

Maybe the Maunder Minimum caused one of the minima of the "little ice age", maybe it didn't. The coincidental timing is somewhat suspicious though.

Possibly this suggests that 51 Peg b isn't an especially magnetic planet... contrasts to, say, Ups And b and HD 177949b which appear to be associated with active regions on their parent stars.

That may bode well for the planet candidates status as a bona fide planet. I would expect a massive planet to bother its star more.

Whatever happened to that possible detection of transits of 51 Peg b's evaporation tail? Are they still awaiting HST STIS spectroscopy to confirm?