1. Planetophagy?
- Subjects
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ASTRONOMERS , *RED giants - Abstract
In January 2002, Nicholas Brown, an amateur astronomer in Australia, noticed something had changed in the sky. It is what happens when a star "goes nova" in a dramatic explosion. However, as observatories around the world turned their telescopes (including the Hubble Space Telescope, which took the picture shown) towards V838, astronomers were baffled. In a forthcoming paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, two other researchers in Australia contend that they have solved the mystery. Alon Retter and Ariel Marom, professional astronomers at Sydney University, believe that the star, a so-called red giant, swallowed three of its planets.
- Published
- 2003