Star caught eating its offspring

Star caught eating its offspring

Well, this is a first.
Apparently the star is a yellow dwarf from Auriga constellation and it is the first time the scientists have seen this process clearly for a planet. They even said that the star`s gravity stretched it to a football shape.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bccc42503ad7.jpg[/atsimg]
(artist`s concept)

Scientists are for the first time seeing a distant planet being slowly eaten by its parent star. Researchers led by Dr Carole Haswell from Britain's Open University are watching, as the doomed world, WASP-12b is being torn apart by a star very similar to our Sun. WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga.

It may also be one of the shortest lived, with only about 10 million Earth years left before it's completely devoured.

The planet orbits so close to its parent star that a year lasts just over one Earth day and it's superheated to nearly 1600°C.

www.abc.net.au...

proof that not all stars are perfect.

First thing that popped into my mind was Ozzy Osborn...
Then I saw where this thread was posted!

What a fantastic picture!

WOW!

Thanks so much for the thread!

peace

reply to post by silo13


No problem!
I love astronomy and I`m glad we are discovering something new in the universe everyday.

reply to post by sandri_90


Sorry but i beat you to this, i posted it last night.
didn't get much attention tho.
I always do a ats search before posting something, it keeps the repost down considerably.

Hubble Watches as Star Slowly Devours Planet

[edit on 5/21/2010 by Alaskan Man]

reply to post by Alaskan Man


I did a search but didn`t see anything.
I apologize.

reply to post by sandri_90


no need to apologize (haha isn't that a lame song on the radio?)

its odd that a search didn't work out for you, but it does happen, I've done searches before, multiple searches to be exact, that turned up nothing, then after posting i get an influx of "this has been posted several times already"

i guess sometimes no matter how much you try, you just cant win


take it easy.