Monday, February 06, 2006

Buuurrrrrp!!



This illustration by space artist Lynette Cook shows a planet ingestion in the HD 82943 system, a solar-type star in the constellation Hydra. HD 82943 has been shown to contain a significant amount of lithium-6, inferring that it swallowed one or more large planets during its history. Since astronomers detected the first planet outside our solar system in 1995, Cook has been illustrating what their instruments reveal about distant unseen worlds.

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