"This is something no human has seen before," Andrew Vanderburg, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the new study, said. "We're watching a solar system get destroyed."
In this artist's impression, a tiny rocky object vaporises as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf known as WD 1145+017 using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star
The evidence for this unique system came from NASA's Kepler K2 mission, which monitors stars for a dip in brightness that occurs when an orbiting body crosses the star known as WD 1145+017.
In this artist's impression, a tiny rocky object vaporises as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf known as WD 1145+017 using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star