NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object

In our nearby stellar district, a burned star nibbles on a fragment of a Pluto -shaped object. With its unique ultraviolet capacity, only the NASA Hubble space telescope could identify that this meal takes place.

The rest stellar is a white dwarf about half of the mass of our sun, but which is densely wrapped in a body the size of the earth. Scientists think that the immense gravity of the dwarf stopped and has torn an icy Pluto analog of the own version of the Kuiper belt system, a glossy ring of debris that surrounds our solar system. The results were reported on September 18 in the monthly opinions of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers were able to determine this carnage by analyzing the chemical composition of the condemned object when its pieces fell on the white dwarf. In particular, they have detected “volatiles” – substances with low boiling points – including carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and a high oxygen content which suggests the strong presence of water.

“We were surprised,” said Snehalata Sahu of Warwick University in the United Kingdom. Sahu conducted the data analysis of a Hubble study on white dwarfs. “We did not expect to find water or other glossy content. Indeed, the Comets and Kuiper type objects came out of their planetary systems early, while their stars evolve in white dwarfs. But here, we detect this very volatile material.

Using the Cosmic Origins spectrographer of Hubble, the team found that the fragments were made up of 64% of water ice. The fact that they detected so much ice meant that the parts were part of a very massive object which was formed far in the icy analog of the Kuiper belt of the stars system. Using Hubble data, scientists calculated that the object was greater than typical comets and can be a fragment of an exo-bluto.

They also detected a large nitrogen fraction – the highest ever detected in white dwarf debris systems. “We know that Pluto’s surface is covered with nitrogen,” said Sahu. “We believe that the white dwarf has accrected fragments of the crust and the mantle of a dwarf planet.”

The accretion of these rich volatile objects by white dwarfs is very difficult to detect in the visible light. These volatile elements can only be detected with a single sensitivity to the unique ultraviolet light of Hubble. In the optical light, the white dwarf would appear ordinary.

About 260 light years old, the white dwarf is a relatively close cosmic neighbor. In the past, while it was a star similar to a sun, it would have been supposed to accommodate planets and an analogous to our Kuiper belt.

In billions of years, when our sun exhausts and collapses with a white dwarf, the objects of the Kuiper belt will be drawn by the immense gravity of the stellar remnant. “These planetsimals will then be disturbed and accrected,” said Sahu. “If an extraterrestrial observer looks at our solar system in the future from a distance, he could see the same kind of remains that we see today around this white dwarf.”

The team hopes to use the NASA James Webb space telescope to detect the molecular characteristics of volatiles such as water vapor and carbonates by observing this white dwarf in infrared light. By studying more white dwarfs, scientists can better understand the frequency and composition of these accretion events rich in volatiles.

Sahu also follows the recent discovery of the interstellar comet 3i / Atlas. It is impatient to learn its chemical composition, in particular its fraction of water. “These types of studies will help us learn more about planet training. They can also help us understand how water is delivered to rocky planets, “said Sahu.

Boris Gänsicke, from the University of Warwick and visitor to the Institut de l’Espagne de Astrofisica de Canarias, was the principal researcher of the Hubble program who led to this discovery. “We observed more than 500 white dwarfs with Hubble. We have already learned a lot about the constituent elements and the fragments of planets, but I have absolutely been delighted that we have now identified a system that looks like objects in the icy external edges of our solar system, “said Gänsicke. “The measurement of the composition of an exo-plyuto is an important contribution to our understanding of the training and the evolution of these bodies.”

The Hubble space telescope has been working for more than three decades and continues to make revolutionary discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is an international cooperation project between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). The Goddard Space Flight Center from NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations in Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute of Baltimore, which is exploited by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, leads Hubble Science Operations for NASA.

To find out more about Hubble, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/hubble