Astronomers have captured images of a star other than the sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface for the first time.

The images show giant, hot bubbles of gas, 75 times the size of the sun, appearing on the surface of the star, called R Doradus, and sinking back into it faster than expected.

Energy is produced in the cores of stars through nuclear fusion and huge, hot bubbles of gas can carry this energy towards the star’s surface.

They then cool down and sink, much like a lava lamp.

Lead author Wouter Vlemmings, a professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said: “This is the first time the bubbling surface of a real star can be shown in such a way.

“We had never expected the data to be of such high quality that we could see so many details of the convection on the stellar surface.”

The images of R Doradus were taken with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (Alma), a telescope co-owned by the European Southern Observatory, in July and August 2023.

Using Alma, the researchers were able to obtain high-resolution images of the surface of the star over the course of a month.

R Doradus is a red giant star, with a diameter roughly 350 times that of the sun, located about 180 light years from Earth in the constellation Dorado.

Its size and proximity to Earth make it an ideal target for detailed observations.

Its mass is similar to that of the sun, meaning R Doradus is likely fairly similar to how our sun will look like in five billion years, once it becomes a red giant.

The research is published in the Nature journal.