MIT astronomers spot a star slowly eating its brown dwarf companion

Astronomers found the system ZTF J0440+2325 about 300 light-years away, where a low-mass star gradually accretes material from a brown dwarf roughly 25 times Jupiter's mass. The pair orbits every 87 minutes, and the feeding could last billions of years.

• System ZTF J0440+2325 lies about 300 light-years from Earth
• Masses: star ~85, brown dwarf ~25 Jupiter masses
• Orbital period is 87 minutes; the dwarf's orbit fits inside the Sun
• The star accretes about 1/100,000 of Earth's mass per year