The majority of TLEs were classified as sprites, 641 elves, 280 halos, 70 upward lightning, 2 blue jets and 1 gigantic jet. The number of TLEs per thunderstorm was found to follow a power law, with less than 10 TLEs for 801 thunderstorms and up to 195 TLEs above the most prolific one. Because of this unprecedented number of European observations, it was possible to construct a climatology of 8394 TLEs observed above 1018 thunderstorm systems and study for the first time their distribution and seasonal cycle above Europe and parts of the Mediterranean Sea.

In 2009 through 2013, the number of optical observations of TLEs reached a peak of 2000 per year. Since then, Eurosprite campaigns have been conducted to observe sprites and other transient luminous events (TLEs), expanding into a network covering large parts of Europe and coastal areas. That makes its orbit tighten even more.In 1999, the first sprites were observed above European thunderstorms using sensitive cameras. It gets closer and closer to the star, and, as it does, the stellar atmosphere gets denser and denser. That gas drifts outward and cools, forming dust, along with bits of the doomed planet that also blow outward.Īs the planet goes through the star's atmosphere, the drag makes the planet's orbit tighten. 'So it's slamming into the star's atmosphere continuously as it orbits around, it's heating up material, and it's expelling some of that stellar atmosphere gas,' says MacLeod. Then, as it puffs up, the star's outer atmosphere comes into contact with the orbiting gas giant planet. In the beginning, before the outburst, the star looks like our sun will look when it starts to run out of fuel and begins to bloat. The researchers took all the observations they had from various telescopes and created astrophysical simulations that basically let them recreate what must have occurred. We just don't have enough oomph in that explosion.' The planet could be anywhere from between a few to maybe ten times Jupiter's mass, she says, 'but can't be much more than that. Mansi Kasliwal, a professor of astronomy at Caltech, says she was skeptical at first, but 'when every single clue fell right in place, then I was convinced that what we were seeing here was indeed a star engulfing a planet.' It occurred to them that this star might have merged with something smaller, like a planet.

It looked almost like a pair of stars had merged, 'but everything was scaled down, from the energy emitted to the mass expelled,' says Morgan MacLeod, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a member of the research team. What's more, that infrared brightness continued after the sudden flare-up. 'It's a bit poetic, in that, you know, this is going to be the final fate of the Earth,' says Kishalay De, a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the lead author of the new report. During a survey of the sky, astronomers saw the star suddenly and briefly brighten, becoming about 100 times more luminous over around 10 days.įollow-up observations suggest that what they witnessed must have been the star's ingestion of a hot gas giant planet about the size of Jupiter, according to a new report in the journal Nature. This particular star lies about 15,000 light years away. That's because, for the first time, they've spotted what appears to be a sun-like star gulping an orbiting planet. An artist's impression of an aging star swelling up and beginning to engulf a planet, much like the Sun will do in about 5 billion years.Īstronomers have gotten a sneak peek at what could be Earth's ultimate fate in about 5 billion years when the sun reaches the end of its life and engulfs the solar system's inner planets – including our own.

Transient luminous events information