The moment a planet was swallowed by its host star has been observed by astronomers for the first time ever.
As stars evolve, they expand and engulf nearby planets.
This is also Earth’s fate — but don’t fret; it’s not expected to happen to our planet for another five billion years, when the Sun is expected to burn out.
While scientists have observed hints of stars shortly before and after being engulfed, the process had not been witnessed until now, according to the findings published in Nature on May 3.
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, and Caltech observed the process for the first time — by accident.
Lead author Kishalay De, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, told NPR: “We weren’t quite looking for this. We were looking for similar things, but not quite this.
“Like a lot of discoveries in science, this happened to be an accidental discovery that really opened our eyes to a new type of phenomenon.”
The planetary event occurred in our galaxy, around 12,000 light-years away, near the Aquila constellation.
The astronomers saw an outburst from a star that became 100 times brighter over 10 days, before quickly fading away.
The outburst was discovered in May 2020, but it took astronomers a year to explain what caused it.
The scientists eventually deduced that this could only be a star engulfing a nearby planet.
Dr De said in a statement: “For decades, we’ve been able to see the before and after.
“Before, when the planets are still orbiting very close to their star, and after, when a planet has already been engulfed and the star is giant. What we were missing was catching the star in the act, where you have a planet undergoing this fate in real-time.
“That’s what makes this discovery really exciting.”
Dr De also hopes this discovery will allow astronomers to find other planets engulfed by their stars.
He told The Washington Post: “The hope is that we would actually be able to use this entire new suite of instruments to try to find every single planet being engulfed in our galaxy in real-time.
“That’s only going to become possible now because of this discovery and together with the availability of instrumentation.”
