It’s a large and a quickly aging star that astronomers have nicknamed “Nasty 1,” and it may help scientists unlock some of the secrets of our galaxy.

The star was first discovered a full 50 years ago, earning its nickname from its catalog numbering of NaSt1, according to a Gizmodo report.

Scientists have classified it as a Wolf-Rayet star, which means it is as a very large star that rapidly ages by dumping its outer layers constantly, exposing the white-hot core beneath filled wit burning helium.

But that’s not what makes Nasty 1 unique, as there are plenty of Wolf-Rayet stars out there. What’s different about Nasty 1 is that, when astronomers took a close look at it via the Hubble Space Telescope, they didn’t see two lobes of gas flowing from opposite sides like other Wolf-Rayet stars — instead it’s just a disk of gas that is orbiting the star.

Why? Astronomers suspect that there is a dark neighbor nearby, invisibly devouring the star before our very eyes and then blasting out energy from its victim.

Jon Mauehan of UC Berekely, the lead author on the paper which was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, said Nasty 1 could be a rare case of a Wolf-Rayet star that forms from a binary interaction, a rare process to witness because it is a very brief one that would last just 100,000 years, and the disk would be visible for an even shorter period of time — perhaps just 10,000 years.

Witnessing the evolution of Nasty 1 could be a boon to astronomers in understanding things like stellar winds which are responsible for blowing off the outer hydrogen layers of Wolf-Rayet stars. What scientists are witnessing could suggest that binary interactions and not stellar winds could be a leading cause of the formation of Wolf-Rayet stars.

The first Wolf-Rayet stars were spotted in 1867 by their namesakes, astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet, at the Paris Observatory. Three were found int he constellation Cygnus with broad emission bands, compared to most stars, which usually only display absorption lines or bands. The unusual effect was a mystery to scientists for decades until Edward C. Pickering guess that hydrogen layers may be responsible for their bizarre appearances.