phoenix planet tagged posts

Astronomers have discovered the first example of a second-generation planet orbiting a white dwarf, a world that appears to have formed from the remains of the dead star it now orbits.

A team of astronomers led by the University of Warwick has identified the first second-generation planet ever found around a white dwarf. While similar “reborn” worlds have been suspected to exist around pulsars, this discovery shows that a second generation of planets can form around this much more common stellar remnant.

First author Jamie Williams, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick, said, “Second-generation planets are worlds that form out of the material a star casts off as it dies...