Seeing that picture of a star absorbing another, I got a dumb question:<p>Stars are balls of glowing plasma. If you were to vacuum it, as another star or black hole too close for comfort would, what would this plasma look like? I reckon it would not be visible, a bit like trying to vacuum fire. All you get is hot, invisible gas.<p>So effectively, the image at the top of the article is completely unrealistic. Any transfer of matter from a star would be basically invisible to the naked eye. You'd see two stars close by, and one getting imperceptibly smaller than the other that slowly grows.<p>Is that correct?