Planet Found Orbiting Rare Solar Twin In Open Star Cluster Messier 67

Using ESO's High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that is remarkable in two aspects; it is orbiting a rare solar twin and that it is found in an open star cluster.

The planet, found in star cluster Messier 67, is orbiting a star that has features almost identical to the Earth's Sun; a solar twin. This is the first solar twin in a star cluster to have a planet orbiting it. The planet is more massive than Jupiter and takes 122 days to orbit the solar twin.

A star cluster is a group of stars that are bound together by the gravitational attraction of each star. Messier 67 is an open star cluster which is a group of young stars held together by a weak gravitational field. The existence of a planet within a star cluster is considered very rare and that only six have been found out of around 3000 exoplanets discovered (1000 of these exoplanets have been confirmed).

There are two other planets found by HARPS inside Messier 67. One similar to the Sun and the other planet is orbiting a red giant star. The two exoplanets are about 30% the mass of Jupiter.

All three planets are outside the habitable zone and orbit close to their host stars making them too hot which rules out the possibility of the presence of water in them.

Sharpest Image of Prawn Nebula (IC 4628) and Star Cluster Collinder 316 Imaged by the ESO

The European Southern Observatory just released the sharpest image of the Prawn Nebula (IC 4628) and the star cluster star, Collinder 316. The Prawn Nebula is 6,000 light years away in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion)

A nebula is a cloud of dust and gas where stars are made. Ionized gasses such as helium and hydrogen combine with interstellar dust and start to gain mass. Over milions of years, the mass gets more dense and starts to generate heat. Once thermonuclear fusion starts a star starts to form.

The image of the Prawn Nebula was taken by the largest telescope in the world, the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). It is a 2.6-metre telescope built around the OmegaCAM camera that contains 32 CCD detectors that can create 268-megapixel images. This new 24 000-pixel-broad image is a mosaic of two such images and is one of the largest single images released by ESO so far.

This is the 1000th press release by the ESO. A milestone that started in 1985 when it featured an image of Halley's comet by the ESO 1 metre Schmidt telescope at La Silla on December 9, 1985 .

Astronomers Observe Unknown Jet stream From Herbig Haro 46/47

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have observed materials streaming away from Herbig Haro 46/47 and also discovered a previously unknown jet stream of material flowing away in a different direction.

The image above shows jets of material flowing out of a newborn star (orange, green, pink, and purple) located 1400 light years away from Earth. The pink and purple jets have been observed before but the orange and green jets , previously hidden by the surrounding gas and dust, was just discovered by ALMA and shows these streams to be highly energetic.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) managed to capture this image because of its much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) in combination with radio observations.

Herbig-Haros are young stars that occasionally blast off hot gas and other material into space. THese materials are ejected when the star collides with a gas and dust cloud at high speeds. Herbig–Haro objects are generally found in star-forming regions, and several are often seen around a single star, aligned along its rotational axis.

These objects are named after George Herbig and Guillermo Haro who first studied them albeit independently of each other. They studied star formations when they came upon these objects. They both recognized that these objects were a a by-product of the star formation process.

Combination Reflection Nebula and Emission Nebula in NGC 6559 Imaged

The Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a striking image of NGC 6559, an object that showcases the anarchy that reigns when stars form inside an interstellar cloud.

An interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases is called a nebula. This region of space is where stars are formed. The materials needed to form stars such as hydrogen and other gases are abundant in a nebula. Stars are formed when dust and gas start to clump together and gain mass. As the mass gets more dense and generates heat, thermonuclear fusion starts and a star starts to form.

NGC 6559 is a nebula that was imaged by the Danish Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (DFOSC) in La Silla Observatory. The colors radiated of the object are from the light given off by the newly formed stars and because of the gasses present in the center gives the nebula a reddish glow and the dust cloud beside it blocks light which gives the nebula a dark and bluish tinge in that area. It is this combination of gas and dust that makes NGC 6559 both an emission nebula in the red part, and a diffusion nebula in the darker area.

Two Planets Within Habitable Zone Discovered Orbiting Kepler 62

Researchers have found two planets the size of the Earth within the habitable zone of its star, Kepler 62.

In a short span of years, discoveries of habitable planets have been reported. Observations by the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS),a high-precision echelle spectrograph, reveal that there may be billions of habitable planets just in the Milky Way alone.

Over 3,000 extrasolar planets (planets located outside the solar system) have been discovered to date. close to 800 of these exoplanets have been identified while the rest are being observed by the Kepler space telescope for confirmation. An exoplanet that is about the same mass of the Earth was observed to be orbiting Alpha Centauri B, the closest star system to the Earth.

Despite the number of planets, scientists are still looking for planets that can be habitable or has features similar to Earth. For it to be habitable, it has to be of the right size, composition, and at a safe distance from its star.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array Pinpoints More Than A Hundred Star Forming Galaxies

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array image shows close-ups of galaxies. The ALMA observations, at submillimetre wavelengths, are shown in orange/red and are overlaid on an infrared view of the region as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array imaged in deep detail 126 galaxies where stars are formed. Previously, these dusty galaxies were difficult to observe because of the available imaging technology. But with the ALMA, each galaxy were imaged in rich detail in minutes.

In the constellation Fornax, meaning The Furnace, lies the Chandra Deep Field South. This region is extensively observed and studied by scientists. Using the ALMA telescope, 126 galaxies were captured in deep and high resolution images.

Bright Blue Young Stars in Star Cluster NGC 2547

This pretty sprinkling of bright blue stars is the cluster NGC 2547, a group of recently formed stars in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This image was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Star Clusters are groups of stars that are held together by each other's gravity.

There are two kinds of star clusters; open star clusters and globular star clusters. Of the two, globular star clusters are more dense and compact. They form a spherical grouping of stars which gets denser as it gets to the center. Some globular star clusters have black holes in the heart of it. Globular star clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars.

Open star clusters are less compact and loosely clustered groups of stars. They usually contain a few hundred stars and are very young. Some of these stars travel the universe losing some stars and attracting others as well.

The Universe is an old neighbourhood — roughly 13.8 billion years old. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is also ancient — some of its stars are more than 13 billion years old (eso0425). Nevertheless, there is still a lot of action: new objects form and others are destroyed. In this image, you can see some of the newcomers, the young stars forming the cluster NGC 2547.

Globular Star Cluster Tucanae 47 In Great Detail

There are over 150 globular clusters in the Milky way galaxy. The most massive globular star cluster is Omega Centauri. The second most massive is 47 Tucanae.

Star clusters are a group of stars that are held together by their own gravity. Because of their strong gravitational attraction, they form a spherical shape. These spheres contains millions of stars and they get more densely packed as one gets nearer its center.

Inside 47 Tucanae are 23 known millisecond pulsars that are highly magnetized, rotating stellar remnants that emit bursts of radiation as they spin. 47 Tucanae has the most number of these pulsars in observed globular clusters. Pulsars are short for "pulsating stars". These are neutron stars that were formed when a star explodes into a super nova.

Planet Forming Disc of Gas And Dust Around Star HD 142527 Observed

Artist's impression of the disc of gas and dust forming around young star HD 142527

The European Southern Observatory's ALMA space telescope has directly observed for the first time a disc of cosmic dust and gas around a young star, HD 142527. This material is believed to further form into giant planets.

Just like stars, astronomers believe that planets are also formed when clouds of cosmic dust and gas start to clump together and gain mass. These planets form from the residual material of a newly born star.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope has helped astronomers look more closely and clearly into space by detecting near infrared light which is hard to detect and invisible to the eye. The telescope which will be fully inaugurated by March 2013, has 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 16 kilometers.

The ALMA space telescope performs very well on these clouds of gas and dust which are dense and dark.

Stars in Star Clusters Observed To Age At Varying Rates

Astronomers at the ESO, ESA, and NASA have observed that some stars in star clusters appear young looking than other stars. This is despite the fact that most of the stars in a cluster were formed at the same time and are roughly the same age. This observation was arrived at upon studying bright blue stars called blue stragglers which appear younger than other stars in the cluster.

Star clusters, as the name suggests, are groups of stars that are grouped together. These stars are bound together by their respective gravitational fields.

There are two kinds of clusters; open star clusters and globular star clusters. Open star clusters are a loosely group of hundreds of young stars. Their gravitational attraction is not strong enough to form a tight bond.

A globular star cluster is made up of hundreds and thousands of very old stars whose gravitational attraction to each other is strong enough that they form a very tight spherical shape. As one goes closer to the center, the number of stars get denser.

These clusters orbit a galaxy or the galactic core as one unit much like a satellite would.

The Milky Way galaxy is known to host around 150 star clusters but many more are believed to be undiscovered. The closest galaxy to the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy, has 500 clusters while Galaxy M87 has 13,000 globular clusters.

The image above shows the globular cluster NGC 6388 observed by the European Southern Observatory.

Largest Area Image of Carina Nebula Captured By VLT and OmegaCAM

One of the largest nebula in outer space, the Carina Nebula, has been imaged by the VLT in very fine detail with the help of its new camera, the OmegaCAM.

A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space. Most nebula are formed when surrounding dust and gas collapse into each other due to its weight and gravity. As these gas and dust collapse into each other, new stars are formed.

Other nebulae are formed when a star reaches the end of its life and explodes into a supernova. Ionized gas and matter are ejected by the supernova as it explodes and a neutron star usually is formed in the middle of this type of nebula.

Nebulae glow in different colors depending on the type of gas surrounding them. Hydrogen gas, for example, emits a reddish glow while ionized oxygen has a greenish glow. The Carina Nebula glows red as imaged by the VLT.

Nebulae are bright and emit a glow because of the ionization of the surrounding gas by ultraviolet radiation. Ultraviolet light is invisible to the naked eye but this type of energy ionizes the surrounding gas which makes it light up. This is similar to the process of a fluorescent light tube.

Planet Floating Freely Through Space Without An Orbit Discovered

The Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope have discovered a planet that is freely wandering through space. It has no orbit nor a star attached to it. This planet free-floating planet is labeled CFBDSIR2149 and also referred to as CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9.

Free-floating planets are objects in space that are not paired up or connected to a star. They roam the universe without a predetermined orbit since there is no star to supply the gravity to put them in their place.

Globular Star Cluster NGC 6362 Shown To Have Young Stars As Well As Ancient Ones

The European Southern Observatory's Wide Field Imager telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile captures an amazing detailed image of the globular star cluster NGC 6362 showing stars both ancient and young within the cluster.

There are groups of stars bound together by gravity called globular star clusters. Because of the pull of gravity on each other, these globular clusters form tightly bound spheres with high densities of stars going towards the center of it.

A globular star cluster can contain thousands of stars and have been existing longer than some lesser dense galaxies in the universe. In the Milky Way alone, there are around 160 identified globular star clusters with more waiting to be discovered. The Andromeda galaxy is known to have 500 while galaxy M87 has 13,000 globular clusters.

Exoplanet Discovered In Alpha Centauri Star System

The Alpha Centauri Star System is a stellar system composed of three stars; Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Being only 4.3 light years away from our Solar System, the Alpha Centauri star system is the closest star system to us. Of the three stars, Proxima Centauri is the closest to the Earth.

Using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph at La Silla Observatory in Chile, astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that is about the same mass of the earth orbiting Alpha Centauri B.

Strange Spiral Structure Discovered Around Red Giant Star By Astronomers

Curious spiral spotted by ALMA around red giant star R Sculptoris

A strange spiral structure was discovered by astronomers around a red giant star. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, astronomers discovered that R. Sculptoris, an old red giant star, has a surprising spiral structure around it.

Astronomers believe that this structure is ejected material from the star. It forms the surprising spiral shape because of another companion star orbiting R Sculptoris. The orbit of the star may influence stellar winds shaping the material into the spiral structure discovered.

Astronomers have yet to discover this unseen companion star.

Although strange, red giants eject hot material later in its life. These materials are made up of dust and gasses that later on form into other stars, planets, and other interstellar objects. Initially, these materials form a gas and dust cloud in outer space called a nebula/nebulae.

The imaging telescope used is the ALMA. It is the most powerful telescope in the world. It covers sixteen kilometers of 66 high-precision antennas high up in the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes.

Using light wavelengths between infrared light and radio waves, the telescope can detect light from cold objects at near absolute zero temperatures in space. Usually, the light emitted is not detected by standard telescopes but since ALMA works in the what is called the millimeter/submillimeter radiation, it can be imaged.

Objects such as gas and dust clouds in space are often the target by ALMA since these areas are dark, cold and obscured by visible light.

ESO Press Release: Surprising Spiral Structure Spotted by ALMA

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a totally unexpected spiral structure in the material around the old star R Sculptoris. This is the first time that such a structure, along with an outer spherical shell, has been found around a red giant star. It is also the first time that astronomers could get full three-dimensional information about such a spiral. The strange shape was probably created by a hidden companion star orbiting the red giant. This work is one of the first ALMA early science results to be published and it appears in the journal Nature this week.

A team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most powerful millimetre/submillimetre telescope in the world, has discovered a surprising spiral structure in the gas around the red giant star R Sculptoris [1][2][3]. This means that there is probably a previously unseen companion star orbiting the star [4]. The astronomers were also surprised to find that far more material than expected had been ejected by the red giant.

Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Publicly Release Data On More Than 750,000 Galaxies, Quasars, and Stars

BOSS is capturing accurate spectra for millions of astronomical objects by using 2,000 plug plates that are placed at the Sloan Foundation Telescope’s focal plane. Each of the 1,000 holes drilled in a single plug plate captures the light from a specific galaxy, quasar, or other target, and conveys its light to a sensitive spectrograph through an optical fiber. The plates are marked to indicate which holes belong to which bundles of the thousand optical fibers that carry the object’s light.
Credit: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sloan Digital Sky Survey III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is an astronomical survey designed to measure the rate of expansion of the Universe. It will focus on the spatial distribution of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) and quasars.

BOSS is one of the four components of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III). SDSS-III is used to cover distant quasars at far reaches of the universe, the distribution of galaxies, the properties of stars in the Milky Way and also subjects such as dark matter and dark energy in the universe.

On March 2012, BOSS announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on.

The first public data release from BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

The Third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has issued Data Release 9 (DR9), the first public release of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). In this release BOSS, the largest of SDSS-III's four surveys, provides spectra for 535,995 newly observed galaxies, 102,100 quasars, and 116,474 stars, plus new information about objects in previous Sloan surveys (SDSS-I and II).

"This is just the first of three data releases from BOSS," says David Schlegel of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), an astrophysicist in the Lab's Physics Division and BOSS's principal investigator. "By the time BOSS is complete, we will have surveyed more of the sky, out to a distance twice as deep, for a volume more than five times greater than SDSS has surveyed before – a larger volume of the universe than all previous spectroscopic surveys combined."

Spectroscopy yields a wealth of information about astronomical objects including their motion (called redshift and written "z"), their composition, and sometimes also the density of the gas and other material that lies between them and observers on Earth. The BOSS spectra are now freely available at http://sdss3.org to a public that includes amateur astronomers, astronomy professionals who are not members of the SDSS-III collaboration, and high-school science teachers and their students.

Bright High Mass Stars Are Part Of Binary Star Systems And Evolve To A Single Star

A new study using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has shown that most very bright high-mass stars, which drive the evolution of galaxies, do not live alone. Almost three quarters of these stars are found to have a close companion star, far more than previously thought. Surprisingly most of these pairs are also experiencing disruptive interactions, such as mass transfer from one star to the other, and about one third are even expected to ultimately merge to form a single star. The results are published in the 27 July 2012 issue of the journal Science.

A binary star is a star system where two stars orbit around their common center of mass. The primary star would be the brightest of the two stars while the other is referred to as the companion star (comes) or secondary star.

A vast majority of all stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are binaries or members of more complex multiple star systems.

Binary star systems are very important in astrophysics because calculations of their orbits allow the masses of their component stars to be directly determined, which in turn allows other stellar parameters, such as radius and density, to be indirectly estimated. This also determines an empirical mass-luminosity relationship (MLR) from which the masses of single stars can be estimated.

The Brightest Stars Don't Live Alone

The Universe is a diverse place, and many stars are quite unlike the Sun. An international team has used the VLT to study what are known as O-type stars, which have very high temperature, mass and brightness^[1]. These stars have short and violent lives and play a key role in the evolution of galaxies. They are also linked to extreme phenomena such as “vampire stars”, where a smaller companion star sucks matter off the surface of its larger neighbour, and gamma-ray bursts.

“These stars are absolute behemoths,” says Hugues Sana (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands), the lead author of the study. “They have 15 or more times the mass of our Sun and can be up to a million times brighter. These stars are so hot that they shine with a brilliant blue-white light and have surface temperatures over 30 000 degrees Celsius.”

The astronomers studied a sample of 71 O-type single stars and stars in pairs (binaries) in six nearby young star clusters in the Milky Way. Most of the observations in their study were obtained using ESO telescopes, including the VLT.

By analysing the light coming from these targets^[2] in greater detail than before, the team discovered that 75% of all O-type stars exist inside binary systems, a higher proportion than previously thought, and the first precise determination of this number. More importantly, though, they found that the proportion of these pairs that are close enough to interact (through stellar mergers or transfer of mass by so-called vampire stars) is far higher than anyone had thought, which has profound implications for our understanding of galaxy evolution.

Hubble Space Telescope Image of Herbig-Haro 110

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of Herbig-Haro 110, a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star.

Herbig-Haro Objects are young stars that occasionally blast off hot gas and other material into space.

This happens when the stars eject gas that collides with nearby clouds of gas and dusty at very high speeds. Herbig–Haro objects are generally found in star-forming regions, and several are often seen around a single star, aligned along its rotational axis.

These objects are named after George Herbig and Guillermo Haro who first studied them in detail. The two astronomers (independent of each other) were studying star formations when they came upon the Herbig-Haro objects. They both recognized that these objects were a a by-product of the star formation process.

Although Herbig–Haro (HH) objects come in a wide array of shapes, the basic configuration is usually the same. Twin jets of heated gas, ejected in opposite directions from a forming star, stream through interstellar space. These outflows are fueled by gas falling onto the young star, which is surrounded by a disc of dust and gas. If the disc is the fuel tank, the star is the gravitational engine, and the jets are the exhaust.

In Hubble’s image of HH 110, one such turbulent streamer of gas can clearly be seen streaking across the frame.

Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Provides Clear Picture of Radio Galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128)

This new image of Centaurus A combines ALMA and near-infrared observations of the massive elliptical radio galaxy. The new ALMA observations, shown in a range of green, yellow and orange colors, reveal the position and motion of the clouds of gas in the galaxy. They are the sharpest and most sensitive such observations ever made. ALMA was tuned to detect signals with a wavelength around 1.3 millimeters, emitted by molecules of carbon monoxide gas. The motion of the gas in the galaxy causes slight changes to this wavelength, due to the Doppler effect. The motion is shown in this image as changes in color. Greener features trace gas coming towards us while more orange features depict gas moving away. We can see that the gas to the left of the center is moving towards us, while the gas to the right of the center is moving away from us, indicating that the gas is orbiting around the galaxy. The ALMA observations are overlaid on a near-infrared image of Centaurus A obtained with the SOFI instrument attached to the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); ESO/Y. Beletsky

Centaurus A is the first galaxy discovered to be a major source of radio waves. It is located in the constellation of Centaurus and discovered by James Dunlop in 04 August 1826. Centaurus A is also known as NGC 5128.

Although Centaurus A is about 12 million light years away, it is is one of the closest radio galaxies to Earth. The galaxy is also the fifth brightest in the sky, albeit only visible from low northern latitudes and the southern hemisphere. It is also believed that Centaurus A harbors a black hole in the center.

The radio emmission from these type of galaxies is because of the synchrotron process or the emission of electromagnetic radiation by relativistic electrons orbiting in a magnetic field. Radio galaxies are more characteristic of large elliptical galaxies and can be detected from large distances which makes them very useful in cosmology.

ALMA turns its eyes to Centaurus A

Centaurus A is a massive elliptical radio galaxy -- a galaxy which emits strong radio waves -- and is the most prominent, as well as by far the nearest, radio galaxy in the sky. Centaurus A has therefore been observed with many different telescopes. Its very luminous centre hosts a supermassive black hole with a mass of about 100 million times that of the Sun.

In visible light, a characteristic feature of the galaxy is the dark band that obscures its centre. This dust lane harbours large amounts of gas, dust and young stars. These features, together with the strong radio emission, are evidence that Centaurus A is the result of a collision between a giant elliptical galaxy, and a smaller spiral galaxy whose remains form the dusty band.

MIT News: NASA's Kepler Observatory Detects Planet Slowly Disintegrating

Kepler Spacecraft and Photometer
Credit: NASA

The Kepler Space Observatory was launched by NASA to discover planets resembling the Earth orbiting other stars. It is named afer Johannes Kepler, a 17th century German astronomer.

Launched in March 2009, the Kepler mission is "specifically designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover dozens of Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets." The space observatory carries a photometer that monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. A photometer is an instrument used for measuring light intensity or optical properties of objects such as stars and planets

Scientists look through data collected to detect periodic dimming caused by extrasolar planets that cross in front of their host star.

According to NASA, the scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:

• Determine the abundance of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
• Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
• Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems;
• Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
• Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
• Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

The Kepler Mission also supports the objectives of future NASA Origins theme missions Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF),

• By identifying the common stellar characteristics of host stars for future planet searches,
• By defining the volume of space needed for the search and
• By allowing SIM to target systems already known to have terrestrial planets.

Newfound exoplanet may turn to dust

Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris — much like the tail of a comet — is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet’s disintegration. According to the team’s calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

The team found that the dusty planet circles its parent star every 15 hours — one of the shortest planet orbits ever observed. Such a short orbit must be very tight and implies that the planet must be heated by its orange-hot parent star to a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers hypothesize that rocky material at the surface of the planet melts and evaporates at such high temperatures, forming a wind that carries both gas and dust into space. Dense clouds of the dust trail the planet as it speeds around its star.