Amateur and professional astronomers have spotted a rare pair of stars in which one completely eclipses the other as they orbit each other.
A team led by Heather Campbell at the University of Cambridge, UK, analysed data from the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite and the William Herschel Telescope in the Canary Islands, Spain. They discovered that the system, named Gaia14aae, is part of a class of binary stars that have short orbital periods and no longer have much hydrogen to burn. A group of amateur astronomers found that the stars were eclipsing. Moreover, one of the stars is siphoning helium away from its lighter but much larger companion. The team also found that the twin stars, both of which are lighter than the Sun, complete an orbit in just under 50 minutes.
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Total eclipse of rare twin stars. Nature 523, 384 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/523384d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/523384d
