小行星可以被吞掉,以前听说过这种情况会发生,可是还没有看到过真实的图片,奇妙的太空!同学们有机会的话可以用天文望远镜好好看下咯!
1 p" F& T8 p/ q( E Scientists used Hubble data to create an image of the planet being swallowed The Hubble Space Telescope has captured evidence of a Sun-like star "eating" a nearby planet.! R, f0 S% W ?8 K8 k$ X: _5 j
Astronomers knew that stars were capable of swallowing planets in orbit around them, but this is the first time the event has been "seen" so clearly.
3 r# F7 R. P Q# a Although the planet was too far away for Hubble to photograph, scientists have created an image of it, based on analysis of the telescope's data.
3 c& P! H) s; k The discovery was published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters. 6 j1 @3 z4 [; c o, L4 { g! r) `
The researchers say the planet, which is called Wasp-12b, may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.
" ]- ~3 U7 O- d- S It is so close to its star that it completes an orbit in 1.1 Earth days and is superheated to more than 1,500C.
- s. [& B. ?5 Z( K: v' t Because of this proximity, the planet's atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times the radius of Jupiter and is spilling material on to the star., y: F; U5 Y: X3 o* W; _+ {
Carole Haswell from the UK's Open University led the research team. She explained: "We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star."* K! k! t' a3 a( @! B/ I3 {* T. [ q( I
Hubble's detection of the cloud enabled scientists to draw conclusions about how it was generated.3 _0 S4 U9 u/ Y6 W3 n
Dr Haswell said: "We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own Solar System."+ |0 f: d: T9 F# O
Wasp-12 is a dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga.
9 o+ Y+ [% e, V: f* L, A: P The exoplanet was first discovered by the UK's Wide Area Search for Planets (Wasp) in 2008. |