Hubble Captures Cannabalism in Action, Finds a Rare Nasty Star in Earth's Neighborhood

Hubble has shown astronomers a star the likes of which has never been seen before.

The space telescope has helped scientists understand better a Wolf-Rayet star about 3,000 light-years from Earth. Such stars are rare and existence of one in Milky Way was unknown until recently. Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, much bigger than the sun. They are characterized by their stripped exterior and revealing helium core.

Astronomers analyzed NaSt 1, using NASA's Hubble telescope. Nicknamed Nasty 1, the star surprised astronomers as defies common perception of Wolf-Rayets. For starters, researchers did not see gases flowing from the star's opposite ends as expected. Instead they saw a massive disk of gas stretching two trillion miles, around the star.

"We were excited to see this disk-like structure because it may be evidence for a Wolf-Rayet star forming from a binary interaction. There are very few examples in the galaxy of this process in action because this phase is short-lived, perhaps lasting only a hundred thousand years, while the timescale over which a resulting disk is visible could be only ten thousand years or less," said study lead Jon Mauerhan.

Wolf-Rayets are formed when stars undergo rapid aging and lose their exteriors. There are many theories as to how that happens. One theory is that star loosens its material in stellar winds. The second and more popular theory is that a neighboring star strips or cannibalizes the aging star.

Researchers believe the gas nebula they found around Nasty 1, contains two stars, though they could not seem them. The nebula may have been formed due to the matter which was stripped out of the primary star and spilt in space. However, most of the matter of the primary star is absorbed by its neighbor which gains mass, researchers said.