Nothing like a little drama in your photography news feed, eh?
If you’re looking for Hollywood shenanigans, however, you’re going to be disappointed.
Because you won’t find these stars on a walk of fame, but instead in the night sky.
Pictures taken by the European Southern Observatory’s appropriately named Very Large Telescope of R Aquarii shows two stars ripping each other apart in startling detail.
Located 650 light years away from the Earth according to Popular Science, what you’re seeing is a red giant and a white dwarf orbiting around a common center and tearing each other apart in the process.
Popular Science reports that such binary star systems (much like the one inhabited by Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars) are actually quite common in the night sky. Four fifths of all stars are rumored to be paired in such a configuration.
Though common, few are as dramatic as these two in R Aquarii. Both stars are at the end of their life cycles and are destroying themselves and each other in the process.
The larger red dwarf is what is called a Mira star because it pulses as it becomes larger.
The white dwarf is a much more diminished star and is “feeding” off of the red dwarf per Popular Science’s report.
What makes this so cool, aside from the photography, is that we are getting a pretty good view of the action in terms of distance between the Earth and R Aquarii. Even though binary star systems are common, R Aquarii is one of the closest to the Earth that we can see.
While scientists know quite a bit about the life cycle of stars, it is a whole other thing to witness it in action. That’s part of what makes astro-photography such a treasure for humanity.
