NASA: Image of Planet Being Consumed by it's Sun

A NASA artist's impression shows that the hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world.

The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its sunlike star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces.

The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter's radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter. "We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star.

We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system," says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University

Picture: NASA / OU / AFP