A team led by MIT researchers has discovered a red dwarf star steadily pulling matter from a brown dwarf that orbits it very closely. The system, called ZTF J0440+2325, lies in the Milky Way about 300 light years away, and the study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The star has about 85 times the mass of Jupiter and the brown dwarf about 25 times. The two objects complete an orbit in about 87 minutes, so close together that the entire path would fit inside the diameter of the Sun. The matter falls directly onto the star’s surface, creating a large hot spot.
The signal was detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, which uses a camera on a telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California. Professor Kevin Burdge noticed an unusual light curve with a repeating triangular pattern, and the team eventually concluded that it was this pair of objects.
Because the rate of absorption is slow, the process could continue for hundreds of thousands or even billions of years. The researchers now hope to find similar systems, including possible cases of planets consuming other planets.
