Star swallows planet whole

BBC Sky at Night Magazine

July 2023

Bloated star gives a dusty belch as it engulfs one of its orbiting planets

- Ezzy Pearson

A star has been caught in the act of swallowing one of its planets for the first time, giving a preview of our own Solar System's fate.

The star, ZTF SLRN-2020, first attracted attention in May 2020 when the Zwicky Transient Facility in California - which scans the sky nightly - detected it had brightened by over 100 times in just 10 days. Initially, astronomers thought the brightening was caused by two stars merging. However, the star remained bright in the infrared for 100 days after the initial outburst, indicating it was surrounded by a cloud of cold material.

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