![V838 Monocerotis V838 Monocerotis](https://tylerirving.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/V838-Monocerotis-300x300.jpg)
If a star began to eat another star, what would it look like? Natasha Ivanova can tell you better than almost anyone; as the Canada Research Chair in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Alberta, pondering questions like this is her full-time job. Last week, Ivanova and her colleagues published a paper in Science which showed that a certain type of stellar cannibalism previously thought to be invisible can be observed from Earth after all. The finding may explain the existence of the recently-discovered phenomena known as luminous red novae.