In 2020, astronomers observed something for the first time that gave the impression to be a star absorbing one among her orbiting planets. But now recent evidence shows that something else has happened.
The planet definitely met her death at the order of her star, but now the way it happened looks completely different. Instead of this expanding star, she approached the planet closer until she was absorbed, recent evidence from NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals. This revolutionary event is as equally fascinating – even when not such astronomers initially believed. Scientists published their findings on April 10 in The Astrophysical Journal.
“We do not find such events every day,” the first creator of the study, Ryan LauAstronomer assistant at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Bred Astronomy Research Laboratory at Tucson, Arizona, said Live Science. This is “probably the first planetary absorbing event that was caught in the act.”
The heavenly event, named ZTF SLRN-2020, covers the star and its planet the size of Jupiter, positioned in Milky Way About 12,000 light from the ground. While watching the stars, scientists noticed a shiny flash of optical light, which indicates that something – more than likely a big planet – was absorbed by the star, leaving only a cloud of dust.
“A completely different scenario”
Initially, the researchers thought that the star was much like the sun and followed the natural life cycle of the sun -like stars. Article from 2023 published in the journal Nature He described the star as entering his last stage of life as a red giant, in which she decreases significantly when he exhausts the supply of hydrogen fuel. The sun will meet this fate in about 5 billion years, eventually swallowing mercury, Venus And probably the earth during the process.
But the data from JWST “paint a completely different scenario,” said Lau. When the instrument in the middle infrared JWST and the close infrared spectrograph collected information from the crime scene, a brand new photo appeared. Observations revealed that the star didn’t emit the light in the type of infrared wavelength expected after moving to the red giant. In other words, it was not as clear because it was expected, which indicates that the technique of a red giant probably didn’t reach.
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When it involves the planet’s devil, the team suggests that it orbida extremely near the host star – even closer than Mercury The sun orbits. Ultimately, the planet of the size of Jupiter began to approach her star increasingly more in a process called the orbital distribution. Lau and his team attribute this distribution of orbits to floral interactions, a phenomenon in which strong gravitational forces between two blue bodies can change the dynamics between these bodies.
Lau said that the whole process probably lasted only just a few months. After the planet spilled towards the star, she contacted the star’s surface. From there, dragging forces pulled him into the core of the star, where he was fully absorbed. The star then threw out the planetary material, which created the brightening event for the first time in 2020. The throwing of it also included longer wavelengths and mud, which led the astronomers to the conviction that the star had expanded, while in reality not.
Such events may be difficult to see, because the light signatures they produce are sometimes quite weak. Opening Vera C. Rubin ObservatoryLau said that these commentary signatures – and related events – can develop into much easier to detect.
“We should find a lot more,” said Lau. “This is one thing I am very excited of.”
