eso9936 — Science Release  A Vanishing Star Revisited  VLT
Observations of an Unusual Stellar System  20 July 1999  ESO's
new Very Large Telescope allows the discovery of a rather
peculiar binary system, made up of two dwarf stars orbiting each
other. The discovery provides new insights on the theory of
stellar evolution.  VLT Observations of an Unusual Stellar
System  Reinhold Häfner of the Munich University Observatory
(Germany) is a happy astronomer.  In 1988, when he was working
at a telescope at the ESO La Silla observatory, he came across a
strange star that suddenly vanished off the computer screen. He
had to wait for more than a decade to get the full explanation
of this unusual event.  On June 10-11, 1999, he observed the
same star with the first VLT 8.2-m Unit Telescope (ANTU) and the
FORS1 astronomical instrument at Paranal [1]. With the vast
power of this new research facility, he was now able to
determine the physical properties of a very strange stellar
system in which two planet-size stars orbi