Chalmers University of Technology
By Ian Randall
Deputy Science Editor
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Who said science wasn’t romantic? Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a heart-shaped cloud of dust and gas has been discovered billowing out of a star just 300 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers studying the elderly red giant star Mira A say that both the volume of material and the speed at which such was released were unexpected.
"We were very surprised to see this structure," noted paper author and astrophysics Theo Khouri of the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, in a statement.
Read More on Science
"We also see that the star’s illumination of the surrounding dust varies in an unexpected way, which implies that the star acts like a lighthouse—illuminating its environment unevenly."
...
Mira A—which has been known to astronomers for more than 400 years—is part of a binary star system, along with the white dwarf Mira B, in the constellation of Cetus (the Whale).
The red giant is what is known as a variable star, meaning that its surface pulsates, causing it to increase and decrease brightness over time. In fact, red giants that do this are known as "Mira variables," after Mira A.
Khouri and his colleagues discovered material expanding out from the cloud while analyzing data collected between 2015 and 2023 by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, both of which are in Chile.
The team was struck by the sheer volume of material released from the star, which was around 100 times more than expected—and equivalent to seven times the mass of Earth.
"We know that stars like Mira lose mass as they age, but we did not expect it to happen in such large and sudden bursts," said Khouri.
...
Observations taken at both visible light and infrared frequencies revealed how two plumes are creating the heart-shaped cloud, which is filled with gas but has dust concentrated along its outside edges.
"We will keep monitoring the expanding cloud around Mira A, as it is becoming so large that it may start to affect its companion star, the white dwarf Mira B," said Khouri.
"It is already gathering some of the material ejected by Mira A."
Understanding how Mira A is losing mass is providing new insights into how aging stars evolve—and end up shedding material that can later become the building blocks of new star systems.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about astronomy? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Reference
Khouri, T., Vlemmings, W. H. T., Oseguera, D. A. R., Tafoya, D., Olofsson, H., Maercker, C. P. M., Saberi, M., Gorai, P., & Danilovich, T. (2026). A surprisingly large asymmetric ejection from Mira A. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.03159
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines