"This red giant star should pulsate, " she told BBC News.

BBC: Kepler star trio find is mystery to astroseismologists

It may be that the binary pair stops the oscillations on the red giant by tugging on the star's surface at just the right times.

BBC: Kepler star trio find is mystery to astroseismologists

Now, an international team of astronomers has trained the Fermi space-based gamma ray telescope on V407 Cygni, a "binary" system comprising a white dwarf star and a red giant companion, 9, 000 light-years away.

BBC: Gamma rays from nova explosion surprise astronomers

Astronomers who have been observing the star since 2005 have determined that as the star expanded into the red giant phase, it destroyed one of its own planets.

FORBES: Astronomers Discover A Star That May Have Destroyed Its Own Planet

Red giant refers to a late phase in a star's life when it has begun to exhaust its hydrogen fuel.

BBC: Newly found planets are 'roasted remains'

What is interesting about this star is that it is a former red giant, a so-called "hot B subdwarf".

BBC: Newly found planets are 'roasted remains'

Standard Type Ia supernovae are binary systems in which a white dwarf star draws so much matter from its companion (often a red giant) that it undergoes a kind of energy overload and detonates.

FORBES: When A Supernova ... Fizzles

Any civilisation that has built a Dyson sphere will have to have been around for a long time, of course and in the very long run its star will start to change in unpleasant ways, ballooning to form a red giant.

ECONOMIST: Is it time for a new approach to finding extraterrestrials?

"When you have stars in a binary or triple system, and one of them burns all its hydrogen and becomes a red giant, if it's close enough it can start to dump some of its material onto that other star, " he explained to BBC News.

BBC: Kepler star trio find is mystery to astroseismologists