Astronomers have discovered a star slowly eating its companion in an extraordinary cosmic feast that could last billions of years.

A small star about 300 light-years from Earth is feeding on a companion that circles it every 87 minutes. The two objects are remarkably close, yet the star is drawing away material slowly enough that the feeding could continue for hundreds of thousands or even billions of years.

The pair, named ZTF J0440+2325, lies within the Milky Way. Its smaller member is a brown dwarf, a planetlike object that falls between planets and stars in mass. The brown dwarf has about 25 times Jupiter’s mass, while the star has about 85 times Jupiter’s mass. Both are small by stellar standards, and the brown dwarf’s entire orbit could fit within the Sun’s diameter.