Giant Tidal Waves are Crashing Onto the Surface of an Enormous Star - by briankoberlein
Binary star systems often appear as variable stars. When we can’t see the individual stars because they are either too close together or too far away, we can see the gradual brightening and dimming of a single point of light as the stars orbit each other. Sometimes if the stars are particularly close when they pass each other they can brighten in unusual ways. One example of this is known as a heartbeat star.
They are called heartbeat stars because if you plot their brightness over time, the pattern, or light curve, looks like a heartbeat seen on an electrocardiogram. It’s the beeping pattern you see in movies and television to show a character is still alive. Heartbeat stars have such a pattern because the two stars have highly eccentric orbits. When they pass close to each other the tidal forces distort the stars into egg shapes, causing them to brighten.
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