News from Keck Observatory: A dead star has been spotted ripping a planet apart!

A dead star has been spotted ripping a planet apart! “Something clearly disturbed this system long after the star’s death,” said co-investigator John Debes of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Astronomers have identified a rare, ancient planetary system still being actively consumed by its central white dwarf star, LSPM J0207+3331, which is located 145 light-years from Earth. This system hosts the oldest and most metal-rich debris disk ever observed around a hydrogen-rich white dwarf, raising new questions about the long-term stability of planetary systems billions of years after stellar death.

The forensic evidence came from observations with the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi. Spectroscopic analysis of light from the dwarf found 13 chemical elements that must have come from a small rocky body—an asteroid or dwarf planet.