14 DAY TRIAL // With the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile, astronomers have caught a glimpse of a pair of stars that are so close to one another they are literally touching.
In a study in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists describe these stars as having their centers separated by just 12 million kilometers (about 7.5 million miles). This might sound like a lot, but it really isn't. Mind you, our Sun has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometers (0.6 million miles).
Being very close to each other, these stars have overlapping surfaces. What's more, a bridge of solar material has formed between them, linking them even more. In time, the stars will either come together to form just one ginormous orb, or will perish and create a binary black hole.
“Both stars in the system are of almost identical size. Material is, therefore, not sucked from one to another, but instead may be shared,” astronomers explain. It is estimated that the orbs now share about 30% of their material.
The stars are described as being both very hot, bright and massive, their surface temperatures reaching 40,000 degrees Celsius (72,000 degrees Fahrenheit). By comparison, our Sun is said to have a surface temperature of about 5,500 degrees Celsius (nearly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit).
Astronomers have named the system VFTS 352 and say it is positioned at a distance of about 160,000 light-years away from Earth, in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, as illustrated in the image below.
