A binary system is a long-term committed partnership between two stars that orbit one another, unlike the lonely sun. About half of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy are in binary systems.
This week, researchers described one of these failed unions: a pair that borders on extreme, whirling around one another every 51 minutes, the quickest known orbital period for a unique class of binary stars. One star is consuming its co-star as part of the drama.
About 3,000 light years away from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Hercules, are the two stars. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
The system is a member of a group of binary stars called ‘cataclysmic variables,’ where a star comparable to our sun circles close to a ‘white dwarf,’ which is essentially the hot, dense core of a burned-out star.
Variable simply implies that, as seen from Earth, the sum of their individual brightnesses changes over time. Cataclysmic describes how its luminance can shift dramatically, often by a factor of 10,000 or more.
The distance between these two stars has decreased over millions of years to the point where they are currently closer together than the moon is to Earth.
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