The artist’s concept shows the circle of hot gas left behind after the stars consumed the planet. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed such a ring and found an enlarged cloud of cool dust enveloping the scene. | Photo Credit: NASA
In May 2020, astronomers observed for the first time the planet was swallowed by host stars. Based on data from the time, they believed that the planet had met its fate when the star swelled later in its lifespan, becoming what was called the Red Titan.
James Webb’s new observations by the Space Telescope – a type of post-mortem test – show that the planet’s end-mise took place differently than originally thought. Instead of the planet coming to the planet, the planet appears to have come to the planet with disastrous consequences – death after eroding the orbit of this alien world over time is protruding, researchers said.
The ending was very dramatic, as evidenced by the aftermaths documented by Webb. The orbital telescope, released in 2021 and operating in 2022, observed that after the event, a magnified cloud of hot gas forming rings around the stars and cold dust enveloping the scene.
“We know there is a fair amount of material from the stars that are expelled as the planet goes through a plunge of death. The evidence after the fact is this dusty leftover that has been kicked out of the host star.”
The star is located in the Milky Way galaxy, approximately 12,000 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Aquila. The Year of Light is the distance that light runs in a year of 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). The stars are slightly redder and lighter than our Sun, and are about 70% of its mass.
The planet is thought to be from a class called “Hot Jupiter.” It’s a hot gas giant due to the narrow trajectory around the host star.
“We believe that, as we see, it had to be a huge planet, perhaps several times larger than Jupiter, to be a dramatic cause of the uproar on the stars,” said Morgan McLeod, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center’s Center for Astrophysics.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system.
Researchers believe that the planet’s orbit gradually deteriorated due to gravity interaction with the star, and assumes what happened next.
“Then it starts grazing the star’s atmosphere, at which point the headwinds of destroying the star’s atmosphere take over, and the planet falls to the star more and more rapidly,” MacLeod said.
“Both planets fall inwards and when they are ploughed deeper into the star, they strip off the outer layer of gas. Along the way, the shattering star gas gets hot, causing the gas, dust and molecules surrounding the star,” MacLeod said.
But they cannot be sure of a real fatal event.
“In this case, we saw how the planet’s lunges affected the stars, but we don’t know for certain what happened to the planet. In astronomy, it’s too big to do an experiment ‘in there’. Stars and planets cannot be crushed together.
As happened here, planets in our solar system are not close enough to the sun to have their orbits collapsed. That doesn’t mean that the sun will eventually swallow any of them. About 5 billion years from now, the Sun is expected to expand outwardly at a huge red stage, allowing it to engulf the innermost planets, Mercury and Venus, and perhaps Earth. At this stage, the stars blow away the outer layers, leaving only the core behind – the remains of a star called the White Dwarf.
Webb’s new observations provide clues about the endgame of the planet.
“Our observations suggest that rather than turning planets into red giants for the stars to engulf them, they are likely to meet their final fate by slowly spiraling into the host star. However, our solar system appears to be relatively stable.
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Released on April 13, 2025
