Imagine having your life force slowly sucked out of you by a close lingering companion who just won't leave you alone.
A "vampire" star has been doing just that to its companion in the small constellation of Lepus.
The strange star system in The Hare constellation contains two stars, once of which - a red giant - is losing its matter to its hotter companion.
"We knew that this double star was unusual, and that material was flowing from one star to the other," says Henri Boffin from ESO, co-author of the findings.
"What we found, however, is that the way in which the mass transfer most likely took place is completely different from previous models of the process. The ‘bite’ of the vampire star is very gentle but highly effective."
The stars are separated by a distance equivalent to that between the Sun and the Earth. Because of the closeness, the hot companion has already cannibalised about half of the mass of the larger star, possibly by a stellar wind.
The video below shows the vampire in action, beginning with a broad view of the Milky Way, then zooming in on the small constellation of Lepus next to the more familiar Orion.
The images were created using the VLT Interferometer at ESO's Paranal Observatory, which produces photos fifty times sharper than those from Hubble Space Telescope.