{"id":11568,"date":"2025-04-11T18:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T18:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/11568\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T18:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T18:50:10","slug":"nasas-autopsy-of-planet-swallowed-by-a-star-gives-astronomers-a-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/11568\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s autopsy of planet swallowed by a star gives astronomers a surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

When many stars reach billions of years in age and run out of fuel, they become dying stars known as red giants<\/a>. The stars expand and can engulf nearby planets, effectively incinerating them.<\/p>\n

In approximately five billion years, Earth\u2019s own sun will turn into a red giant and engulf planets, including our blue marble.<\/p>\n

While astronomers have identified many of these red giant stars, it was only recently that the process of eating a planet had been directly observed.<\/p>\n

Astronomers have identified many red giant stars and suspected that in some cases they consume nearby planets, but the phenomenon had never been directly observed before. In 2023, scientists discovered a star nearing the end of its life had swelled and absorbed a planet that is likely about the size of Jupiter.<\/p>\n

\"NASA\u2019s<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope has observed what is thought to be the first-ever recorded planetary engulfment event. The observations yielded surprising results (NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI))<\/p>\n

Now, with additional observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, they say there\u2019s been a \u201csurprising twist.\u201d Instead of eating the planet, Webb\u2019s observations show the planet\u2019s orbit shrank over millions of years, pulling the celestial body closer to its demise until it was fully engulfed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause this is such a novel event, we didn\u2019t quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction,\u201d Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement. \u201cWith its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lau is the lead author of a new paper published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Using the telescope\u2019s Mid-Infrared Instrument and Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the researchers examined the Milky Way galaxy scene about 12,000 light-years away from Earth.<\/p>\n

While the sun had been recognized as more like our sun, a measurement from the Mid-Infrared Instrument found the star was not as bright as it should have been if it had evolved into a red giant. The finding indicated to researchers that there was no swelling to engulf the planet, as once believed.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An artist\u2019s concept shows a planet gradually spiraling into its host star. Scientists say this Jupiter-sized planet started to graze the star\u2019s atmosphere before \u2018falling in\u2019 (Credits: R. Hurt & K. Miller (Caltech\/IPAC))<\/p>\n

\u201cThe planet eventually started to graze the star’s atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment,\u201d team member Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained. \u201cThe planet, as it\u2019s falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.\u201d<\/p>\n

The planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star.<\/p>\n

The Near-Infrared Spectrograph revealed a hot disk of molecular gas surrounding the star, where carbon monoxide was detected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith such a transformative telescope like Webb, it was hard for me to have any expectations of what we\u2019d find in the immediate surroundings of the star,\u201d said Vassar College\u2019s Colette Salyk, an exoplanet researcher and a co-author of the new paper. \u201cI will say, I could not have expected seeing what has the characteristics of a planet-forming region, even though planets are not forming here, in the aftermath of an engulfment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When many stars reach billions of years in age and run out of fuel, they become dying stars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[7958,7959,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-11568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-james-webb-space-telescope","9":"tag-red-giants","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114320836166246628","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}