Weird But Cool – Star Eats Planet

An illustration depicting a star engulfing a planet

Scientists say they’ve finally caught a star in the act of engulfing a planet in the end stage of its life. Credit: K. Miller / R. Hurt (Caltech / IPAC) illustration

Weird But Cool – Star Eats Planet.

ABOUT STAR EATING PLANET

Astronomers have known the fate of planets like Mercury, Venus, and Earth when their host stars are about to die, but never have they observed it happening in space — until now.

Using the Gemini South telescope(opens in a new tab) in Chile, scientists have seen the first evidence of a bloated old star absorbing an exoplanet as it puffs out during its final death throes. The event was observed in a long, low-energy outburst — the sign of a planet skimming a star’s surface.

In the past, astronomers have found evidence of stars that have consumed planets, sometimes by doing a sort of post-mortem autopsy on what’s left of the dead star. But new research(opens in a new tab) published in the journal Nature presents the first direct evidence of star-eats-planet as it happened. The group hopes the event will provide other researchers with helpful clues to discover other stars consuming planets elsewhere in the universe.

Star engulfing a planet

Infographic on a star engulfing a planet. Credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld
During the event approximately 12,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquila, the dying star, about the size of the sun, absorbed a planet up to ten times the mass of Jupiter, according to the study.
A dying red giant star puffing out
When a sun-like star nears the end of its life, it expands into a red giant, 100 to 1,000 times its original size, eventually overtaking nearby planets. Credit: ESA / Hubble Space Telescope

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