This is an artist's impression of a burned-out star, called a white dwarf, accreting rocky debris left behind by the star's surviving planetary system. At lower right, an asteroid can be seen falling toward a Saturn-like disk of dust that is encircling the dead star. Infalling asteroids pollute the white dwarf's atmosphere with silicon. This element is not found in white dwarfs, but it is part of a rocky planet's composition. This "planetary chemistry" implies that the white dwarf's progenitor star had planets composed of Earth-like material, and that such planets are common around stars. The telltale chemical fingerprints were identified by the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The dead star is one of two observed by Hubble in the Hyades star cluster, 150 light-years from Earth.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)| About The Data | |
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| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from proposal : B. Gaensicke (University of Warwick), D. Koester (Universitat Kiel), J. Farihi (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge), and J. Girven (University of Warwick). |
| About The Object | |
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| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
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| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
