Star Devours Planet, Brightens Spectacularly
This artist’s impression shows a doomed planet skimming the surface of its star. Astronomers used a combination of telescopes to spot the first direct evidence of an aging, bloated sun-like star, like the one pictured here, engulfing its planet. These telescopes included the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, the W.M. Keck Observatory, and NASA’s NEOWISE mission. The aging star depicted here, called ZTF SLRN-2020, is roughly 10 billion years old. It had begun to inflate over hundreds of…