FAREWELL OGLE-TR-113b, it was nice to meet you. The planet, discovered in 2002, is the first found that seems to be spiralling towards its star – and a grisly death.

As the Jupiter-sized world orbits its star, we see a temporary dimming in the star’s light when the planet passes between it and us. This transit occurs during each of its 32-hour-long orbits.

Observations made between 2002 and 2009 show that the time between transits is shortening by 60 milliseconds per Earth year, say Elisabeth Adams of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues (Astrophysical Journal, vol 721, p 1829). They say this implies that the planet’s orbit may be shrinking. It is currently just 2 per cent of the Earth-sun distance.

The spiralling in of such a closely orbiting planet is to be expected, as gravitational tugs between the two bodies will boost the star’s spin rate at the expense of the planet’s orbital energy. At its current orbital speed, the planet will get ripped apart by the star’s gravity in just 1.4 million years, the team say. “It would be pretty spectacular. You’d be watching a planet get shredded,” says Rory Barnes of the University of Washington in Seattle.

Another explanation is also possible. If the star has an unseen stellar partner, the whole star-planet system could be moving closer to Earth in response to the partner’s gravity. That would shorten the apparent time between transits – at least until the partner’s orbit started pulling the system away from Earth again. The team plan to keep monitoring the system to test this idea.