Artist's impression of a contact binary system

Based on the extreme star system VFTS 352, located about 160 000 light-years away in the Tarantula Nebula, this animation shows two very hot, bright and massive stars coming closer together until their surfaces overlap. VFTS 352 is known as the “kissing stars”, since the centres of the star are separated by just 12 million kilometres — so close that a bridge is formed between them. Such close stellar relationships are known as contact binary systems. This animation was originally produced for an ESO Chasing Starlight episode on the strangest stars in our Universe.