Hottest Planet Known Slowly Eaten by Its Own Star

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spotted a planet 1.4 times larger than Jupiter, being devoured by its mother star.

Scientists from the British Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) consortium and American Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy of the University of Colorado gathered to make researches on WAST-12 b, Science Daily reports.

The planet was first noticed in 2008 and it drew scientists' attention because of the phenomena it registered due to the extreme closeness to its star: so close that it needs only one Earth day to complete a full orbit.

This positioning has generated an extreme overheating of planetary gas which has made a feeding ring for the star, with a size three times bigger than Jupiter's radius.

The study has shown that the high concentration of magnesium in the gas makes the absorption of light wavelengths possible, determining the star to be totally hidden.