What happens when a star swallows a planet? The James Webb space telescope who managed to capture the images of this rare event reveals it.
NASA James Webb spatial telescope observed a star that swallows a planet. Contrary to the initial hypotheses, the data suggest that The star has not expanded until the celestial body wrapsbut that the orbit of the planet has gradually reduced, dragging it inexorably towards destruction within the star.
“Being a rare event, we did not know what to expect,” said Ryan Lau, astronomer at the NSF Noirlab (National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) in Arizona. “Thanks to the high resolution in the infrared telescope, we are getting crucial information on the end of the planetary systems, perhaps including ours”.
The hypothesis of the “red giant”. Two tools on board the Webb, the Miri (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and the Nirspec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), conducted an ‘”autopsy” of the cosmic scene. The researchers combined the data of the two tools to reconstruct events. There star of this phenomenon is located in the Milky Way, about 12,000 light years from the earth. The brightness event, cataloged as Ztf Slrn-2020, had been initially identified as a flash of optical light by the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Caltech Palomar Observatory in California.
Then, analyzing the archived data of NASA neoowise spatial telescope, the scientists had noticed an increase in the infrared brightness of the star already a year before the optical peak, suggesting the presence of dust. This preliminary analysis of 2023 had led to hypothesize that the star was similar to the sun and he was entering the red giant phase, gradually expanding as he exhausted his hydrogen.
How it really went.Now the observations of the Miri del Teloscope Webb have provided a different picture. Thanks to its high sensitivity and space resolution, the telescope has precisely measured the issue of the star and its surrounding environment, located in a densely populated space region. The data, published in the magazine The Astrophysical Journal they revealed that The star was not as bright as you would expect from a red giantindicating the absence of a significant expansion such as to swallow the planet as previously thought.
The researchers suggest that the planet initially had dimensions similar to Jupiter, but orbit very close to the star, even closer than the orbit of mercury around our sun. Over the age of millions of years, The orbit of the planet has gradually restrictedleading to catastrophic consequences. “In the end, The planet started touching the star atmosphere. From that moment on, an uncontrolled and increasingly faster fall process has begunExplained Morgan Macleod, a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“During his descent, the planet began to disintegrate around the star.”
The dramatic end. In the impact, the planet would have expelled gas from the external layers of the star. Expanding and cooling, the Heavy elements of this gas have condensed cold powder during the following year. While the researchers expected a cloud of cold dust expanding around the star, an analysis with the powerful Nirspec revealed a hot circumstall disc of molecular gases closer to the star. The high spectral resolution of the Webb has also made it possible to identify some molecules in this increase in growth, including carbon monoxide.
“With such a avant -garde telescope like Webb, it was difficult to have precise expectations about what we would find in the immediate vicinity of the star,” Colette Salyk of Vassar College, expert in Esopianeti and co -author of the study commented. “I have to admit that I would not have expected to observe something with the characteristics of a region of planetary training, following an event of this type”. The presence of this type of gas opens new questions for researchers about what really happened once the planet has been completely swallowed by the star. «This is truly the culmination of the study of these events. It is the only one we observed in action, “said Lau.
The role of space telescopes. These observations, part of the Guaranteed Time Observation 1240 program specifically dedicated to study of mysterious and sudden infrared brilliant eventswere among the first conducted by the Webb under the name of “Target of Opportunities”. This type of study is reserved for events, such as the explosions of Supernova, which are expected to take place, but for which researchers do not know the exact moment or place. NASA spatial telescopes are part of a growing international network ready to testify to these changes, helping us to understand the functioning of the universe.
