iron and nickel rich planetesimal tagged posts

A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by University of Warwick astronomers in a disc of debris formed from destroyed planets, which the star ultimately consumes. The iron and nickel rich planetesimal survived a system-wide cataclysm that followed the death of its host star, SDSS J122859.93+104032.9. Believed to have once been part of a larger planet, its survival is all the more astonishing as it orbits closer to its star than previously thought possible, going around it once every two hours.

The discovery, reported in the journal Science, is the first time that scientists have used spectroscopy to disc...